Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital (BWFH) is poised to award $4.5M dollars in Community Health Impact Funds to support mental and behavioral health, including substance use disorder, aligning with one of the following strategies:
- Strategy 1: Increase Community Health Workers (“CHWs”) and Recovery Coaches. Through the creation of pipelines, increase the pool of CHWs and Recovery Coaches with specialized mental health/substance use training who have lived experience and reflect low-income, immigrant, LGBTQ, and/or older adult populations, as well as communities of color. Through this strategy, community-based organizations will link trained individuals with workforce opportunities.
- Strategy 2: Community Behavioral Health Services. Improve access to community behavioral health services through partnerships with community-based organizations. These integrated services are expected to impact the social determinants of health, including housing, employment, education, social environment, built environment, and violence and trauma.
- Strategy 3: Resource Specialists in the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) & Boston Public Schools. Placing Resource Specialists in Boston Housing Authority (BHA) & Boston Public School (BPS) Sites: Provide funding to place trained behavioral health specialists who have lived experience in BHA and BPS sites.
- For example, BPS graduates may be trained in mental health first aid and serve as behavioral health resource specialists in local school systems. Similarly, specialists that may be placed at BHA sites will receive mental health first aid training to create the infrastructure to support BHA residents with behavioral health needs. Community-based organizations who are not currently working with BHA or BPS may apply for this funding – an established relationship is not required. This is only one example of how funds may be used in these settings.
The LOI (Letter of Intent) application process for BWFH’s Mental Health Community Impact Funds is now closed. If you submitted an LOI, a notification has been emailed to you regarding whether your proposal has been selected to move on to the RFP (Request for Proposal) stage of the process. If you have any further questions, reach out to Tracy Sylven at tsylven@bwh.harvard.edu.
Questions?
Return to BWFH Community Health Impact Funds Homepage
