Behavior Activation Implementation in Texas
In collaboration with the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute and Baylor Scott and White Health Systems, and with support from the Lone Star Prize, we are building the capacity of individuals working on the frontlines, including community health workers, medical assistants, nurses and other motivated health workers without prior training in mental health care, to learn, master and deliver BA to persons with depression in their communities.
Since the start of the program in 2021, we have successfully demonstrated the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of a remote coach-supported digital training and adapted the entire training for Spanish language, which involved working closely with the Hispanic community and community health workers serving them.
Our Next Steps
We will now focus our efforts to support the delivery of the newly attained skills by front-line workers to patients with depression, through a close collaboration with the health care systems and sustained delivery of high-quality care over time.
We are also delighted to expand our collaboration with Baylor, Scott and White Health Systems, thanks to a new NIH U01 award (PI: Katherine Sanchez) to integrate the EMPOWER training into the curriculum of under-graduate social work students in UT Arlington. We will also collect patient outcomes to evaluate the extent to which EMPOWER is achieving the intended impact for individuals with depression.
Acknowledging progress at The Global Mental Health Conference 2023, we reflected on recent milestones, and delved into the implications of our findings for future developments.
Click here to view the poster presented at the NIMH conference focusing on a sucessful pilot study with frontine workers in Texas to scale-up depression care.
