This application responds to PA-98-052, """"""""Mentored Patient- Oriented Research Career Development Award"""""""" (K23). The goal of the five-year training and research plan is to prepare the candidate to become an independently-funded investigator in the study of factors that facilitate and impede the efforts of individuals with severe mental illnesses to achieve major rehabilitation goals and to become full participants in mainstream community life. A longer-term goal is to prepare the candidate to serve as an effective bridge between mental health services researchers and public mental health policymakers. The training plan is interdisciplinary in focus, including course work, mentored tutorials, and research projects under intensive supervision by a multidisciplinary team of mentors. In Years 1- 2, he will visit field sites for exposure to assertive community treatment (ACT) programs that have integrated a broad spectrum of rehabilitative interventions. In Years 2-3, expertise in advanced quantitative and qualitative analytic methods will be gained through two research projects. Project number 1 will be a study of combined ACT and supported employment interventions at three sites. Project number 2 will be a study of an ACT program that is integrated with multiple rehabilitative interventions. In Years 4-5, the candidate will undertake Project number 3, a study of the """"""""capacity"""""""" of two South Carolina communities, one rural and one urban, to offer opportunities for full participation in mainstream community life. Capacity involves not only the degree of support for formal clinical and rehabilitative interventions, but also the manner in which local social, economic, and political conditions contribute to, or detract from, integration. Results from this study will constitute the basis of and justification for an NIMH R01 application to extend this line of inquiry. Additional training experiences are designed to teach the candidate to disseminate research findings to stakeholder groups, as well as methods by which to link science, service, and policy (e.g., participation in public-policy task forces). This application is also responsive to PA-99-073, """"""""Integrating Mental Health Services Research and Behavioral Science,"""""""" and the National Advisory Mental Health Council's Report, """"""""Bridging Science and Service,"""""""" which call for innovative, interdisciplinary services research into public mental health problems.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 11 publications
