ResearchProjects

The project will evaluate the efficacy of a nurse-driven, multi-level program in Mott Haven – one of the hardest hit localities by the overdose epidemic and the poorest congressional district in the continental U.S. – with substance use-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations about three times as high as the New York City-wide average.

The project has two components:

• Component 1: Community-screening, brief intervention, and referral to services (SBIRT) consists of nurses and community health workers (CHWs) to engage with and deliver behavioral health services with youth and their parents and caregivers in the household. This entails door-to-door community outreach, engagement, and substance use and mental health screening; culturally and developmentally-appropriate brief intervention; and navigation to substance use/mental health treatment or prevention.
• Component 2: Multi-sectoral Community Partnerships, entails delivery of the family-based Linking Lives program by nurse-CHW teams to support multigenerational communication about substance use and a community engagement component consisting of a collective action initiative that will develop a Mott Haven-focused social marketing campaign and the establishment of a sustainability and long-term capacity community committee that will codevelop and launch the project’s sustainability plan.

It will conduct a comparative effectiveness trial to evaluate the effects of the Community SBIRT intervention (Component 1) alone vs. the full, multilevel Safe Families intervention package of Community SBIRT plus Linking Lives and engagement in the Collective Action Initiative (Component 1 plus component 2).