Community Impact Projects Provides $2.5 Million
Southwest Washington Accountable Community of Health (SWACH) is excited to announce the award recipients for our Community Impact Projects funding opportunity. This grant strives to develop and sustain projects and programs that address the social determinants of health through a racial equity lens. This funding opportunity provides over $2.5 million in awards to organizations working to address important topics in Southwest Washington.
The Community Impact Projects awards funds for three crucial areas: Capacity Building, Organizational Redesign, and System Redesign. Read more about our awardees below.
Capacity Building
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Project Title: Building Capacity to address barriers to treatment through Peer Outreach for individuals impacted by the opioid crisis in Clark County.
The goal of this project is to hire a full-time Peer Outreach Specialist to expand access to treatment services. It will include targeted outreach to assist low-income communities dealing with Substance Use Disorder (SUD). This position will play a vital role in helping individuals navigate their community while creating awareness of treatment options and other resources.
About the organization: “Ideal Option provides underserved populations with low-barrier access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for SUD in an outpatient office setting. Ideal Option prides itself on never having wait lists with most new patients being seen within 24 business hours. Currently, Ideal Option serves over 900 unique individuals in Clark County per year at our three Vancouver clinics.”
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title: Community Health Capacity Building Project
This project will help Bridgeview Resource Center with capacity building in the following ways:
• Collect essential data on the most needed intervention types and preferred delivery method
• Provide training and educational interventions and materials
• Assistance coordinating and hosting health clinics and health resource events
The organization will connect a minimum of 250 individuals to community health interventions and resources during their contract period.
About the organization: “Bridgeview’s work plan targets our low-income, vulnerably housed, and historically disadvantaged—with a focus on families with children and young adults. We rely on a variety of outreach methods to connect with our service population.”
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Project Title: Visioning a Comprehensive Approach to Community-Clinical Linkages
“Columbia River Mental Health Services will undertake a comprehensive strategic planning process utilizing a racial equity lens that will involve both internal and external stakeholders, centering patient and community voices” as the plan for the next three to five years. “This strategic planning approach will reflect CRMHS’s commitment to centering client voice and creating an inclusive process utilizing a racial equity lens to guide our plan and success.”
About the organization: CRMHS provides behavioral health and recovery services throughout Southwest Washington. They are dedicated to transforming the lives of children, adults, and families in the communities of SW Washington.
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Project Title: Systems Integration Project
”The Systems Integration Project will use a diversion approach to work with eligible clients. Eligibility criteria to access SIP is having an adult head of household who self-identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ and/or the BIPOC communities. This program will serve families, singles, couples, and youth aged 18-24, who are literally homeless or meet the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness and experiencing a housing crisis… Mediation, reasonable accommodations, empowerment-based support, motivational interviewing, financial support, and connections to mainstream resources encompass the type of support a household may receive through diversion”.
About the organization: “Council for the Homeless mission is to provide community leadership, compelling advocacy, and practical solutions to prevent and end homelessness in Clark County, Washington.”
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This project will help Empower Family Focused Services reach their full potential in a short time frame. Funding develops a culture of equity and increase community resilience and/or better position the organization to respond to emerging needs and demands, such as training, learning activities, materials, underwriting evaluations, or planning.
About the organization: EFFS envisions raising vibrant and active community members by investing resources specifically in the second generation of immigrants. Their goal is to help mold, guide, and mentor the next generation of immigrants.
Organizational Redesign
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Project title: Advancing Pasifika Wellness in Southwest Washington
The aim of this project includes identifying a community center early on while increasing staff capacity and programs. Their goal is to enroll 50 Pasifika elders, 100+ families, and 100+ youth in their programs. The project will also work to increase the wellness of enrolled individuals. Another key objective is providing health education in Pasifika languages, focused on services including vaccinations, diabetes management, maternal health care, cancer prevention screenings, and more.
About the organization: PICA-WA is committed to “identifying and securing a cultural home/community center, identifying, onboarding and securing full-time Pasifika staff stewarding the wellness of families, elders, and our youth while strengthening partnerships with local health providers to ensure we are strengthening an access point for our people were linking with PICA-WA automatically links them to culturally responsive and anti-racist health services and interventions in the region.”
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Project title: Children’s Home Society of Washington Family Resource Center Redesign
Children’s Home Society of Washington will be implementing a new service model at their family resource centers in Vancouver and Washougal, Washington, that will help reduce barriers for families who need access to a broad range of social services and help strengthen family health, stability, and resilience. To launch this model, CHSW will build more partnerships with other community organizations to connect families to resources such as basic needs, housing assistance, financial literacy, and employment and integrate our existing programs like behavioral health into the model.
About the organization: “Our programs focus on supporting the child within the context of their family, building on the family’s strengths to increase their resilience and family well-being, and reaching families at the earliest point possible.”
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Project title: Clark County Refugee Behavioral Health Redesign Project
This project assesses the feasibility of a number of strategies to improve access to behavioral health services for refugees. The second goal of the project is to connect Slavic and Afghan refugees with mental health resources and improve their overall understanding of mental health services in the USA.
About the organization: Since 1921, Lutheran Community Services Northwest has been a vital advocate for community members. They “partner with individuals, families, and communities for health, justice, and hope.”
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Project title: Operationalizing Equity
“CultureSeed is the only organization in our region offering year-round outdoor immersion and outdoor mentorship for underserved youth with a focus on mental health. Starting as early as 7th grade and continuing through high school and beyond, youth meet regularly for outings, overnights, peer circles, counseling, mentorship, and a summer outdoor adventure trip. CultureSeed serves youth who qualify for free and reduced lunch, and/or are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), and/or are struggling with mental health. CultureSeed also provides youth and their families with referrals, support groups, and an emergency relief fund.”
CultureSeed will use these funds to continue its “whole circle approach” which centers on long-term contact, wellness, the outdoors, and community connection and opportunities.
System Redesign
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Project title: Marginalized Community-focused Addiction Resources and Education (M-CARE)
This project aims to “address the unique needs of those identifying as BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ who seek substance use services in collaboration with community partners. Provide comprehensive addiction care integrated with primary care to all ages with a focus on pregnant women, newborns, and adolescents, especially those with low income.” Key milestones and success measures include creating outreach materials for the BLOOM program while partnering with Columbia River Mental Health.
About the organization: “FMSW Residency Program trains family medicine residents in a comprehensive and personalized model of integrated primary care with addiction medicine. Our program optimizes the best health care for each patient and the diverse communities we serve.” “The Bloom Clinic cares for patients with substance use disorder who are pregnant or parenting with children less than 2 years of age. Since 2018, the Bloom Clinic has been offering integrated care for opioid use disorder and pregnancy care (prenatal care). Recently, the Bloom Clinic has expanded to other substance use disorders in pregnancy like alcohol use disorder.”
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KLINK is a collaborative effort between multiple organizations in Klickitat county. Through this funding opportunity, they will further develop their programming to support the priority populations included in the grant.
Their goals are to “1. increase efforts to redesign the mental health system in Klickitat County; 2. increase and expand the number of services and supports in the community; 3. dig into the next level of cross-sector, multi-partner coordination; and 4. ensure that all of the mental health services in the community, current and new, actually meet the needs of community members, and especially priority populations.
KLINK includes the following organizations:
• Bingen-White Salmon Police Department
• Comprehensive Healthcare
• Klickitat County Health Department
• Klickitat County Senior Services
• Skyline Health
• Washington Gorge Action Programs
• White Salmon Valley Education Foundation
• White Salmon Valley Schools
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This project is a collaboration between two organizations: Latino Leadership NW and Welcome Home Health, Inc. The project will “redesign the care transition continuum creating an equitable and accessible systematic approach to strengthening the community-clinical linkage as well as physical-behavioral health integration for K-12 students. The primary focus is providing therapeutic and wrap-around services for students in need of Behavioral/Mental Health diagnosis and ongoing therapy.” The project will break down the barriers that BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth often face in getting the behavioral and mental health support they need.
SWACH is grateful for the hard work of each of these organizations. By addressing the social determinants of health through a racial equity lens, they are helping ensure that everyone in our community can have access to the care they need, in culturally responsive ways.
