The School Health Services Program was awarded a one-million-dollar grant for the 2020-2021 school year under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to implement evidence based trauma mental health training in schools affected by Hurricane Michael including the counties: Jackson, Calhoun, Liberty, Bay, Gulf and Gadsden. The School Health Services Program will work with the National Center for School Mental Health at the College of Medicine of the University of Maryland to implement the evidence-based curriculum. The effectiveness of the training will be evaluated by the SHAPE system, a program developed by the National Center for School Mental Health to determine the effectiveness of mental health services in schools.

As many as one-third of women with Opioid Use Disorder have a comorbid mental health condition such as depression, anxiety, or other diagnoses, making treatment more complex as both the substance use and concurrent mental health issues must be treated at the same time. Florida has a shortage of obstetricians and other primary care providers for pregnant/postpartum women who are trained to screen, diagnose, and treat and refer women with mental health and substance use disorders during pregnancy and in the post-partum period.  Families often find it difficult to find and access services, and many women are unwilling to admit to substance use for fear that their prenatal care physician will no longer provide care. It is not uncommon to have pregnant women with OUD who must travel to neighboring counties, or even further, to find a provider who can treat them. We are working on strategies to make perinatal psychiatric support services more accessible to physicians so that they can continue to treat women in their own communities, rather than sending them an hour or more away for care. Telehealth programs are a promising approach, and a pilot model in Florida is already providing these services to physicians in specific counties.  We hope to expand this model statewide.

The Department anticipates hiring an Opioid Coordinator who will continue the work of the ASTHO/OMNI grant mentioned above and collaborate with the BH IMPACT project as well to help meet the substance use and mental health needs of pregnant and post-partum women.

The Department will continue their efforts related to the perinatal mental health grant from HRSA, BH IMPACT. The purpose of the project is to develop a sustainable screening and treatment model to improve maternal mental health outcomes in Florida. Over the five-year grant period the team members will work to achieve the following overarching goals:

• Build capacity in Florida to fully and competently deliver all aspects of screening, referral, engagement, and mental health consultation trainings to all major obstetrics practices and birth hospitals in the targeted region.
• Build and implement a screening and treatment model for maternal mental health in all major prenatal health care practices in the targeted region.
• Develop and implement training program for obstetrics providers on tool use, follow up, and the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program (MCPAP) model; develop and refine the psychiatric consultation model.
• Initiate and maintain provider participation and engagement in the program.
• Expand mental health and substance abuse referral networks in the regions.
• Increase statewide maternal mental health resources and capacity.
• Increase access to screening, referral, and treatment for women in rural and non-rural areas through telehealth resources.
• Train community mental health providers in evidence-based psychotherapy and management of perinatal mental health disorders.
• Develop and implement a State Data Dashboard System.

The VIP Section will continue their suicide prevention efforts. The Department of Children and Families (DCF) also facilitates the Suicide Prevention Coordinating Council (SPCC). Established by Florida statute, the SPCC meets quarterly and advises the Office of Suicide Prevention and provides annual recommendations to the legislature of top priorities for preventing suicide. The State Surgeon General is a Council member. Meetings are also attended by the Bureau Chief of Family Health Services, who serves as the Surgeon General’s alternate, and the Administrator of the VIP Section, also in the Bureau of Family Health Services, who has been recognized by the Committee as a permanent guest. The SPIAC is a workgroup under the Council. Once the new state suicide prevention plan is implemented in the Fall of 2020, SPIAC will transition into the Strategic Plan and Evaluation Workgroup, tasked with tracking and measuring success of the state action plan goals, objectives and activities. The Council nominated the Department’s VIP Section Administrator to continue in role as Chair.

The Strategic Plan and Evaluation Group meets monthly. The VIP Section Administrator was also nominated to serve as Co-Chair of the Data Analysis Workgroup, which also meets monthly. The Data Analysis Workgroup identifies and links relevant data sources for suicide surveillance. The Department’s Injury Epidemiologist is a member of this workgroup. The VIP Section Administrator also serves as a Department representative of the Veterans’ workgroup. This SPCC workgroup is comprised of participating members of the Governor’s Challenge to Prevent Suicide Against Veterans, Service Members, and their Families. The final workgroup under the SPCC is Communications. The Department will request membership on this workgroup to align messaging.

Additional DOH VIP partners include the Florida Department of Veteran’s Affairs, the Department of Education, the Department of Elder Affairs, the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence and the Florida State University College of Medicine. University partners include the University of Central Florida, the contracted provider of Garrett Lee Smith Youth Early Intervention and Suicide Prevention grant, and includes, among their faculty, recognized experts in the Zero Suicide project. The UCF Center for Behavioral Health Research & Training is recognized by the SAMHSA Suicide Prevention Branch as an expert resource for the adapted version of the Zero Suicide strategy for public health departments. UCF is also a partner in the FL Implementation of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (FINS) Project, with the DCF State Office of Suicide Prevention, USF), and Florida Hospital. Using a mentorship model, FINS integrates the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention to ensure that health and behavioral health settings and adult-serving systems are prepared to engage and treat at-risk adults with culturally competent evidence-based/best-practice (EB/BP) suicide prevention, treatment, safety planning, and care coordination services. The goals of the project include: transform health and behavioral health systems infrastructure through the development of Zero Suicide advisory committees, suicide prevention policies and procedures, and the integration of EB/BP measures and mechanisms to monitor suicide care; enhance the collaboration of local and state-level partnerships to promote Zero Suicide and National Suicide Prevention Lifeline utilization; develop workforce training capacity to utilize EB/BP suicide prevention strategies; enhance care coordination strategies to increase the number of recovery and support linkages for at-risk adults to be sustained in treatment; improve the sharing, and tracking of suicide-related indicators (suicide ideation, attempts, deaths, and service utilization) via regional and state-level data surveillance systems.

Finally, the Violence and Injury Prevention Section is currently recruiting two new team members, a Suicide Prevention Coordinator, and a Mental Health liaison. There two positions will work closely together to continue agency-wide capacity building efforts as well as solidifying relationships with other state agencies to ensure a comprehensive approach and system of care for addressing, intervening and preventing suicide and mental health stigma.