The Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services Administration (MHAASA) of Puerto Rico submits this proposal to: 1) Increase access to national digital library materials for about 75 mental health professionals and supportive staff by creating an Internet infrastructure in the major mental health treatment programs and settings of the public agency responsible for the provision of mental health services; and 2) To increase knowledge and skills of at least 90% of the clinical and support staff of the MHAASA in the Psychiatric Hospital of Rio Piedras and two San Juan Mental Health Treatment Programs to use the Internet to access digital library resources that will permit them to keep up to date in their treatment approaches and services to clients. The Principal Investigator (PI) is the current Assistant Administrator for Planning, Carmen Nydia Cruz, a doctoral candidate in Sociology with a statistics background, and the Program Manager is the current Systems Operations Manager of the MIS Office of the Agency. Together with the MIS staff and expert consultants to be selected through a competitive bidding process, they will purchase hardware and software, coordinate the installation of fiber optic and ISDI lines to the Psychiatric Hospital and Treatment Programs (3 remote sites) to permit clinical staff to access through the Internet, a gamut of national library resources in their respective areas. The agency Training Institute will help organize and coordinate training activities for the professionals of the targeted sites on how to do searches on the Internet, how to protect confidentiality of information, use anti-virus and firewalls and Web-Browse, among other topics. The Planning Office will assist consultants to evaluate the effectiveness of each training through pre and post test instruments and satisfaction questionnaires, and will also monitor the implementation of the work plan and the overall achievement of project objectives. This is a one-year project, after which the agency will absorb subscription and connection fees to sustain the effort. A total of $72,000 is requested.
