Pediatric ACES assessment within a collaborative practice model: Implications for health equity.

It is now well understood that exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) is negatively linked to health and well-being across the lifespan. In an effort to disrupt ACEs exposure and its effects, there is a nationwide movement to screen for ACEs in primary care, despite a lack of well-established guidelines for assessing and responding to risk within routine care. Additionally, developing culturally responsive models of ACEs assessment is imperative, particularly because racial and ethnic minority populations face disproportionate risk of exposure to ACEs and disparities in quality of health care.

Enhanced Child Psychiatry Access and Engagement via Integrated Care: A Collaborative Practice Model With Pediatrics.

Objective: This study examined mental health service use outcomes for children receiving integrated care via a collaborative-practice model (CPM). The study hypothesis was that the delivery of intensively integrated clinical care within pediatrics, combined with community-based parent support from family support specialists (FSSs), would facilitate mental health or substance use disorder treatment access and engagement for youths at risk of experiencing disparities.

Methods: The study sample consisted of 228 children referred by pediatricians for outpatient child psychiatry evaluation within an urban safety-net hospital system in 2013.

Pursuing cost-effectiveness in mental health service delivery for youth with complex needs.

Background: Mental health advocates seek to expand children's services, noting widespread failure to meet the needs of public sector youth suffering from serious emotional disturbance (SED). However, state and national budgets face deepening cuts, with rising health care costs taking the blame. As the gap between needs and finances widens, identification of cost-effective treatments that will benefit children with SED and their families is of increasing importance.

MHSPY: a children's health initiative for maintaining at-risk youth in the community.

The Massachusetts Mental Health Services Program for Youth (MHSPY) is a home-based clinical intervention that seeks to maintain youth with severe functional impairment in the community via delivery of integrated primary care, mental health, substance abuse, and social services. Using blended public agency funding, traditional and nontraditional services are provided within a private, not-for-profit, managed care organization. Individualized, comprehensive care plans are developed by an MHSPY care manager, who works intensively with the family and the Care Planning Team to identify needs and resources.

Children's health services in a "system of care": patterns of mental health, primary and specialty use.

Objectives: This study was designed to investigate demonstrable impacts of the Mental Health Services Program for Youth (MHSPY), a highly coordinated, intentionally integrated "system of care," on patterns of health service utilization for youth with multiple needs.

Methods: The MHSPY intervention is available to a target population of urban youth who face barriers to health care and are at risk for out-of-home placement. These youth are enrolled in a non-profit managed care organization (MCO).