Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program – Healthy Acadia
The Georgia Health Policy Center recently spoke to Caroline Bloss, Healthy Acadia’s Recovery Projects Director, about how the Outreach grant allowed them to support pregnant women and new moms with substance use disorder.
To date, what has been the biggest accomplishment or win in your program?
I am most proud of the fact that we are able to work in partnership with the tribal population of the Passamaquoddy Tribe. There are two reservations in Washington County — one of the two counties that we serve. The work with the tribal population has grown tremendously and we learned some lessons along the way. Originally, we were naive in our thinking and assumed that we would hire one community health navigator for each county and that the Washington County navigator could simply support the tribal population. Our Washington County navigator has no tribal affiliation and we found out we could not really reach the tribal population. We realized that it is imperative to hire a navigator who is either from the reservation or has strong ties to the reservation and who is culturally competent. This was one unforeseen challenge that became one of our biggest successes. We just hired our second tribal navigator.
What is a tip or early learning that you would share with an organization launching a similar outreach program?
We learned that having willingness to pivot was vital in the success of our program. We made the assumption that most of our referrals would come from our hospital partners and that the Prosper Program would be very clinically driven. What we learned after about six months in is that the majority of our referrals come from recovery coaches and from community health and social service organizations. Also, we underestimated how most of our clients’ needs would be mostly around their basic needs like food, housing, transportation, and employment rather than needs around clinical care. In fact, there were some clinical measures that were originally incorporated into the grant that we decided to remove because they were simply no longer appropriate for Prosper.
How do you see participation in the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy’s Outreach Program impacting your broader health improvement efforts?
Thanks to multiple federal funding opportunities we have had from HRSA, the work and our accomplishments have all built on top of one another, including our navigation services. This Outreach grant that funds the Prosper Program, has shed light on the continued need for navigation support in our communities. This Outreach grant has been integral, not only in showing us that navigation services are extremely important, but it has also helped to destigmatize substance use disorder, particularly for women who are pregnant and who have substance use disorder — our target population for this grant. In addition, being able to target support for a very specific population also helps to destigmatize other areas of the recovery world.
What is next on the horizon for your grant program?
There is excitement around the fact that we have four navigators now, when we started with two. Our hope is to continue the navigation work, whether it is specific to women with substance use disorder who are pregnant is to be determined. This navigation work is broad enough that you can meet criteria for multiple funding sources. We will continue to apply to grants and to keep our partnerships strong with private foundations. We did receive a significant amount of funding from a private foundation which allowed us to establish recovery resource flex funds for clients. Keeping these relationships strong is extremely important when it comes to sustainability. We will also see how our consortium members and community partners can play a role in the absorption/expansion of some of our grant activities.