About the Equitable Care Collaborative:
The Equitable Care Collaborative (ECC) is a health equity-focused initiative that builds on the strengths of community health centers and leverages the partnership of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (Mass League)and the Mass General Brigham (MGB) to expand access to behavioral health (BH) services for underserved populations, including racial/ethnic minorities (e.g., Black or African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Native American) individuals from rural communities.
About the Behavioral health capacity building: Using data to advance health equity Initiative
Opportunities exist to improve capacity for Behavioral Health (BH) data collection and to provide comprehensive tools and training for CHC BH & Medical staff to understand access and gaps by race and ethnicity and to empower staff in developing interventions to address identified disparities. The ECC seeks to take a results-driven and evidence-based approach in its investments, to support innovative public policy initiatives, and to work with the League and CHCs statewide to have a meaningful and measurable impact on health equity. The project aims to understand the behavioral health care needs of racial/ethnic minorities (e.g., Black or African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Native American) and individuals from rural community patients of the community health center. The project will utilize a health equity framework to identify disparities and pilot data-driven clinical follow ups that are responsive to the linguistic, cultural, and other unique needs of patients. The goals of the project are to build behavioral health capacity and advance health equity by using data to understanding behavioral health screening by race and ethnicity, and to provide support for the development of interventions and best practices to address the disparities.
Two cohorts of up to five community health centers will be selected to participate in a 9-month learning community. The Mass League will manage the learning community as well as provide technical assistance as needed. Each CHC will receive a $30,000 stipend for staff replacement time for participating in the initiative.
Data project cohort 1 will run from October 1st, 2021 - September 30th, 2022
Data cohort 2 will run from June 1st, 2022 – May 30th, 2023.
As part of this quality improvement initiative, CHCs will be asked to:
v Submit a short application
v Meet monthly with League staff to review data and trends
v Participate in both joint peer learning collaborative
v Storyboard
v Collaboration on anticipated submission of manuscript publication of best practices
Applications deadlines are end of business day on Thursday August 19, 2021.
For more information, please contact:
Scune T. Carrington, MSW LICSW (she/her/hers)| Director, Integrated Care
Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers
617-377-7951 (Direct) | (857) 423-0050 (mobile)
40 Court Street, 10th Floor| Boston, MA 02108
scarrington@massleague.org