Dr. Gabriela L. Stein 
received new funding from the NIH National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for the project “Building Infrastructure for Community Capacity in Accelerating Integrated Care.” Drs. Kari Eddington, Stephanie Coard, and Andrew Supple are co-principal investigators on the project. Coard and Supple are faculty members in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies.
Despite the promise of accountable care organizations (ACOs) in transforming the healthcare landscape, a recent study revealed that ACOs serving a greater proportion of racial/ethnic minorities scored worse on quality performance measures and that 37% of ACOs had no formal relationship with a mental health provider. Thus, their proposed collaborative R01 seeks to establish community-ACO-academic partnerships to expand capacity for mental health care in North Carolina and Massachusetts. They propose to test an innovative model that includes training community health workers to provide an integrated, evidence-based intervention in community settings linked to ACOs, and to determine the long-term sustainability of the intervention within ACO networks.
