Saturday, June 29th 4:15PM – Miami, FL
Colleagues Dr. Angela Mooss, Dr. Gladys Ibanez and I will present “Implementing a Wellness and Resilience Paradigm within Health Care and Criminal Justice Systems: Innovations to Base Prevention Programs and Policies on Stakeholders’ Strengths”
I will focus on screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment or “SBIRT”
1. SBIRT Background:
a. 40 million Americans have an injury-related emergency department (ED) visit each year.
b. 50% of trauma injury patients used alcohol during their injury.
c. The American College of Surgeons mandated universal alcohol use screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment or “SBIRT” in all level 1 trauma centers.
d. Up to 30% of trauma injury patients have a “significant other,” such as partners, friends and family with them in the ED.
2. SBIRT is in some key ways consistent with a Community Psychology approach:
a. Preventive
b. Systems level: national policy
c. Cost-effective
3. However, there are key ways in which it is inconsistent with a Community Psychology approach:
a. Deficit-focused: Strengths focus is more likely to enhance resilience
c. Ignores social context: Relies solely on professional health care providers
c. High implementation variability
Symposium overview:
As community psychologists working in the field, we have opportunities to oversee or lead projects and shape how strategies and programs are implemented. We naturally strive to incorporate our community psychology values and principles into policy and program implementation, however, there are many barriers to systems change. Each of the proposed sessions in this symposium will present a project from a different U.S. urban community in which community psychologists are implementing projects to create change: one related to trauma and emergency department policies and practices, one related to behavioral health integration within primary care, and one related to community interventions for Latinos in the criminal justice system. For each of these projects, we plan to describe our challenges and successes in implementing our project strategies using a community psychology framework. The strengths and weaknesses of existing systems and our desire to add innovative processes will be discussed. We seek to engage our audiences to participate in this community psychology critique, by including a walk-through demonstration of key aspects of each program to help us to better consider the multiple perspectives of key community stakeholders. Some of the issues we plan to discuss during the sessions include stigma and a focus on deficits as opposed to strengths, disease models rather than health promotion models, cultural gaps between stakeholders and community members, and lack of buy-in from staff currently employed by such systems.
Please attend and bring your expertise to share with us and the other attendees!
