Literature Collection

Initiatives that support and incentivize the integration of behavioral health and general medical care have become a focus of government strategies to achieve the triple aim of improved health, better patient experience, and reduced costs. The authors describe the components of four large-scale national initiatives aimed at integrating care for a wide range of behavioral health needs. Commonalities across these national initiatives highlight health care and social services needs that must be addressed to improve care for people with co-occurring behavioral health and general medical conditions. These findings can inform how to design, test, select, and align the most promising strategies for integrated care in a variety of settings.

BACKGROUND: Opioid use disorders (OUDs) have devastating effects on individuals, families, and communities. While medication treatments for OUD save lives and are increasingly utilized, rates of treatment dropout are very high. In addition, most existing medication treatments for OUD may often neglect the impact of untreated OUD on relationships and ignore the potential role support persons (SPs) could have on encouraging long-term recovery, which can also impact patient treatment retention. METHODS/DESIGN: The current study adapts Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) for use with SPs (family member, spouse or friend) of patients using buprenorphine/naloxone (buprenorphine) in an outpatient community clinic setting. The study will evaluate whether the adapted intervention, also known as integrating support persons into recovery (INSPIRE), is effective in increasing patient retention on buprenorphine when compared to usual care. We will utilize a two-group randomized design where patients starting or restarting buprenorphine will be screened for support person status and recruited with their support person if eligible. Support persons will be randomly assigned to the INSPIRE intervention, which will consist of 10 rolling group sessions led by two facilitators. Patients and SPs will each be assessed at baseline, 3 months post-baseline, and 12 months post-baseline. Patient electronic medical record data will be collected at six and 12 months post-baseline. We will examine mechanisms of intervention effectiveness and also conduct pre/post-implementation surveys with clinic staff to assess issues that would affect sustainability. DISCUSSION: Incorporating the patient's support system may be an important way to improve treatment retention in medication treatments for OUD. If SPs can serve to support patient retention, this study would significantly advance work to help support the delivery of effective treatments that prevent the devastating consequences associated with OUD. Trial registration This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04239235. Registered 27 January 2020, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04239235 .

Among the consequences of systemic racism in health care are significant health disparities among Black/African American individuals with comorbid physical and mental health conditions. Despite decades of studies acknowledging health disparities based on race, significant change has not occurred. There are shockingly few evidence-based antiracism interventions. New paradigms are needed to intervene on, and not just document, racism in health care systems. We are developing a transformative paradigm for new antiracism interventions for primary care settings that integrate mental and physical health care. The paradigm is the first of its kind to integrate community-based participatory research and systems science, within an established model of early phase translation to rigorously define new antiracism interventions. This protocol will use a novel application of systems sciences by combining the qualitative systems sciences methods (group model building; GMB) with quantitative methods (simulation modeling) to develop a comprehensive and community-engaged view of both the drivers of racism and the potential impact of antiracism interventions. Community participants from two integrated primary health care systems will engage in group GMB workshops with researchers to 1) Describe and map the complex dynamic systems driving racism in health care practices, 2) Identify leverage points for disruptive antiracism interventions, policies and practices, and 3) Review and prioritize a list of possible intervention strategies. Advisory committees will provide feedback on the design of GMB procedures, screen potential intervention components for impact, feasibility, and acceptability, and identify gaps for further exploration. Simulation models will be generated based on contextual factors and provider/patient characteristics. Using Item Response Theory, we will initiate the process of developing core measures for assessing the effectiveness of interventions at the organizational-systems and provider levels to be tested under a variety of conditions. While we focus on Black/African Americans, we hope that the resulting transformative paradigm can be applied to improve health equity among other marginalized groups.