CoLab Projects
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CARE (Culturally Affirming & Responsive Mental Health) for Kids & Families
CARE (Culturally Affirming & Responsive Mental Health) for Kids & Families is a new, statewide initiative to promote culturally responsive behavioral healthcare while centering youth, caregivers, and community members with lived experience/expertise in the behavioral health system. The project is led by a growing coalition of collaborators and administered by UW’s CoLab for Community and Behavioral Health Policy.
Evidence-Based Practice Institute (EBPI)
In 2007, the Washington State Legislature passed House Bill 1088 which established the Evidence Based Practice Institute (EBPI). The Institute serves as a statewide resource to promote high quality mental health services for children and youth (age 0-17) in Washington State. Our primary focus is supporting the implementation and monitoring of quality psychosocial services within mental health service systems by supporting the decision making of policymakers, administrators, and providers through the development of policy and system solutions to translational challenges.
Housing Stability for Youth in Courts (H-SYNC)
H-SYNC is a prevention tool for youth homelessness developed by the CoLab team in collaboration with workgroups in Snohomish and Kitsap Counties. The model uses routine practices already embedded in court systems to automatically identify and refer youth and families to needed prevention/intervention services.
Leadership Initiative
Quality behavioral healthcare for children and adolescents should be available to all who need it; yet this type of care is often elusive. This can be particularly true for children and adolescents experiencing economic and racial marginalization. At EBPI/CoLab , we are working to improve access to quality behavioral health care for all of Washingtonian children using a multi-layered strategy focused on supervisors, embedded clinical expertise, and executive-level leadership.
ACCELERATING RESEARCH USE IN COURTS (ARC)
To help bridge the research-to-practice gap, ARC will assess the validity, reliability, and sensitivity of a new Conceptual Research Use (CRU) tool in a large sample of juvenile court staff in Washington, Utah, and Los Angeles, California.
REENGINEERING SILOED SYSTEMS OF CARE
The goal of this work is to use a system codesign process to develop and implement an evidence-based, innovative approach in Grays Harbor County to reduce fatalities from the opioid epidemic, a pressing public health concern. Codesign is a partnership approach, where end users are actively involved in the design process to help ensure that the outcome meets their needs and expectations. This process will help to promotes ownership, fit, and sustainability while embracing and acknowledges real world complexity up front. Furthermore, this project with assess the acceptability and feasibility of utilizing system codesign to address complex public health needs.
OPPORTUNITY-BASED PROBATION (OBP)
The CoLab is partnering with Pierce Co. to facilitate the implementation and preliminary analysis of the OBP program, wherein youth create meaningful goals and incentives that reward prosocial behavior
REDESIGNING DATA TO REDUCE DISPARITIES
The CoLab is partnering with the WA Partnership Council on Juvenile Justice (WA-PCJJ) and the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) to assess how to invest in better development, distribution, and use of disparity data in juvenile arrest/referral.
Co-Designing for Justice
The UW CoLab is excited to be work with Pierce County’s public health and juvenile court as well as the Hilltop Center4Excellence and IAMWORTHY grassroots organizations to reinvision the justice system for kids in the county. Check out our co-design page for more information about the codesign process.
Girls Only Active Learning (GOAL)
Girls Only Active Learning (GOAL) is a girl-specific adaptation of Aggression Replacement Training (ART) for girls aged 13-17 who are involved in or at risk of involvement in the justice system. GOAL is based on a cognitive-behavioral model of emotion and thought regulation, problem-solving, coping skills, and moral reasoning used by other justice-involved CBT-based interventions and focuses on building and sustaining prosocial relationships and future goals.
Innovation opportunity for mental health services at Seattle Children’s Hospital
The CoLab is working with the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH) to identify innovation areas for children's mental health services. A codesign process will be used to develop the scope of this project and the strategy to achieve the identified goals. System co-design is a partnership approach, using a structured process to elicit creativity, apply evidence, and engage consumers. The review will focus on areas that will provide the most benefit for SCH Psychiatry patients, families, the SCH community, as well as the community we serve. The project is likely to focus on equity, use of evidence-based practices, access to services, continuity of care, and/or community engagement.
Healthy Equity Policy Recommendation in Tacoma-Pierce County
The CoLab is working with the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department to develop a health equity policy recommendation using a codesign process that combines research evidence and community voice. CoLab will conduct an overarching review to identify existing public health policies that have a strong positive impact on health equity. The research evidence will synthesize community-identified priorities with effective potential policy solutions.
Rapid Evidence Reviews (RERs)
The CoLab and EBPI frequently partner with policymakers, organizations and agencies to conduct RERs, which take a relatively short time to complete, can encompass a wide range of research topics, and have transparent and structured processes. Rapid reviews have emerged as a useful approach to provide actionable and relevant evidence in a timely and cost-effective manner. Rapid reviews are a type of knowledge synthesis for which the steps of the systematic review are streamlined or accelerated to produce evidence in a shortened timeframe. In a range of circumstances, there is value in accelerating the review process and fast-tracking knowledge synthesis for pressing policy and systems decisions.
BEHAVIORAL INCENTIVES FOR INCREASING QUALITY (WA-BIIQ)
This pilot study being done in Wenatchee and Yakima aims to assess streamlining monitoring and support options for improving client outcomes in children’s mental and behavioral health systems.