GRANT PROJECTS

Rural Communities Opioid Response Program Psychostimulant Support Grant - $391,914 over 4 Years

During the first year of this four-year work plan, our office has worked to increase resources for communities facing challenges around Opioid Use Disorder through increasing the capacity to offer Mental Health First aid, and the Strengthening Families Program. We also assisted in the planning of a student SUD summit, and staff members Kasey Shakespear and Jennifer Liebert provided education on SUD in Rural Utah and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

Rural Communities Opioid Response Program

Behavioral Healthcare Support Grant - $500.000 over 3 years.

This grant fund has allowed us to continue actively working with our Utah Rural Opioid Healthcare Consortium in Carbon, Emery, and Grand Counties. What is unique is that the program focuses on psychostimulants which includes illicit drugs and non-opioid medications with potential for abuse. Three of our community partners have engaged with us to recieve additional education and support around Contingency Management. Over the next year, we will be producing patient education materials on psychostimulants, hosting the first of three ECHO series, and expanding capacity to educate on Question/ Persuade/Refer, a suicide prevention intervention.

Closing Projects

Rural Communities Opioid Response Program

Implementation II - $1,000,000 over 3-years.

We are in the closing months of a 3-year work plan that included treatment provided by Aspire365 to 14 individuals with Opioid Use Disorder in Garfield, Kane, Piute, and Wayne Counties. The outcomes of these individuals have been very positive. We are in the beginning phases of preparing to draft publications to report the outcomes. Under the grant project, our team was also able to develop software to aid in the delivery of this service and enhance data collection. As we close out the project, one of the major tasks still in process is placing 7-8 medication disposal boxes throughout the four county region to enhance access to proper medication disposal. Overall, this has been a very impactful project.

Addressing Health Equity in a Post COVID-19 Landscape - $150,000 over 20 months

Under this grant, our office was able to attend training and complete the requisite requirements to be recognized as a formal Project ECHO Hub through the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. With this new status, we delivered our first 6 part ECHO series on Health Equity in rural Utah. We also created an entirely new health resource database that can be filtered by county and resource type. The database includes all 24 rural/frontier counties in Utah, as well as Cache county, which is designated as urban but due to being surrounded by rural communities, requested to be added. The project was an enormous success that saw significant engagement in both newly created resources.