Partnering to Promote Health and Mental Health for Pregnant and Postpartum Women in Virginia
In the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work, there is a very unique partnership taking place between social work research and public health promotion for pregnant and postpartum women. When Sarah Kye Price, Ph.D. joined the faculty in 2006, she already had a history of partnering with public health departments in New York and Missouri around ways to promote women’s mental health and support their parenting capacity in ways that fostered social work’s commitment to system level change. It took only a few meetings to realize there was an overwhelming mutual desire for collaboration with the Virginia Department of Health, too. Over the past seven years, Price has been part of a wide-ranging number of community-University partnerships ranging from infant mortality risk reduction in underserved communities, designing and testing mental health interventions for low-income women experiencing perinatal depression, supporting community change through work with regional perinatal councils, and serving as advisor to the Health Commissioner’s Infant Mortality Work Group. But, most recently, the Behavioral Health Integrated Centralized Intake project highlights Price’s work bridging the state’s public health infrastructure with social work’s commitment to change at the individual, family, and community level.
The BH-CI project emerged from a strong, existing collaboration between the Virginia Department of Health, Office of Family Health Services and VCU’s School of Social Work. Price had been actively involved in statewide and local home visiting initiatives, and was one of the collaborators that was called upon to be a part of a large, federal grant available to state health departments through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, sponsored by Health Resources and Services Administration and the Administration on Children and Families. Virginia received one of 20 competitive awards nationally to test innovative improvements to the way in which home visiting support services are provided to at-risk families. In Virginia, that includes the BH-CI project which is working intensively with four communities to implement behavioral health risk screening (perinatal depression, substance abuse, smoking, and interpersonal violence) at the earliest points of contact women and families have with community support services. The BH-CI team isn’t just about research; the School of Social Work is also providing training and technical assistance in centralized intake system coordination, implementation of data systems, as well as building knowledge and confidence of mental health providers to screen for behavioral health risks and link people to services. In addition to Price as the Principal Investigator, the project employs Molly Massey, RN as the Training and Technical Assistance Specialist; Tracey Wingold, M.S.W. as the Behavioral Health Resources Consultant and Crystal Coles, M.S.W., Ph.D. Candidate as the research assistant.
Even though research and practice reiterates how mental health and behavioral health are linked with pregnancy and parenting outcomes, community services are compartmentalized between mental health, substance abuse/behavioral health, health promotion, and child welfare. This project bridges community service providers and uses a community-based participatory research framework to co-facilitate knowledge building and resource sharing among pilot communities. We hope to learn more about the facilitators and barriers to community partnership for mental health promotion, and to develop systems of screening and referral that can be replicated in other Virginia communities. In addition, since the project is one of the federally designated home visiting evaluation projects, the knowledge that is generated is shared nationally and may influence the development of maternal and child health policy and practice.
In the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work, there is a very unique partnership taking place between social work research and public health promotion for pregnant and postpartum women. When Sarah Kye Price, Ph.D. joined the faculty in 2006, she already had a history of partnering with public health departments in New York and Missouri around ways to promote women’s mental health and support their parenting capacity in ways that fostered social work’s commitment to system level change. It took only a few meetings to realize there was an overwhelming mutual desire for collaboration with the Virginia Department of Health, too. Over the past seven years, Price has been part of a wide-ranging number of community-University partnerships ranging from infant mortality risk reduction in underserved communities, designing and testing mental health interventions for low-income women experiencing perinatal depression, supporting community change through work with regional perinatal councils, and serving as advisor to the Health Commissioner’s Infant Mortality Work Group. But, most recently, the Behavioral Health Integrated Centralized Intake project highlights Price’s work bridging the state’s public health infrastructure with social work’s commitment to change at the individual, family, and community level.
The BH-CI project emerged from a strong, existing collaboration between the Virginia Department of Health, Office of Family Health Services and VCU’s School of Social Work. Price had been actively involved in statewide and local home visiting initiatives, and was one of the collaborators that was called upon to be a part of a large, federal grant available to state health departments through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, sponsored by Health Resources and Services Administration and the Administration on Children and Families. Virginia received one of 20 competitive awards nationally to test innovative improvements to the way in which home visiting support services are provided to at-risk families. In Virginia, that includes the BH-CI project which is working intensively with four communities to implement behavioral health risk screening (perinatal depression, substance abuse, smoking, and interpersonal violence) at the earliest points of contact women and families have with community support services. The BH-CI team isn’t just about research; the School of Social Work is also providing training and technical assistance in centralized intake system coordination, implementation of data systems, as well as building knowledge and confidence of mental health providers to screen for behavioral health risks and link people to services. In addition to Price as the Principal Investigator, the project employs Molly Massey, RN as the Training and Technical Assistance Specialist; Tracey Wingold, M.S.W. as the Behavioral Health Resources Consultant and Crystal Coles, M.S.W., Ph.D. Candidate as the research assistant.
Even though research and practice reiterates how mental health and behavioral health are linked with pregnancy and parenting outcomes, community services are compartmentalized between mental health, substance abuse/behavioral health, health promotion, and child welfare. This project bridges community service providers and uses a community-based participatory research framework to co-facilitate knowledge building and resource sharing among pilot communities. We hope to learn more about the facilitators and barriers to community partnership for mental health promotion, and to develop systems of screening and referral that can be replicated in other Virginia communities. In addition, since the project is one of the federally designated home visiting evaluation projects, the knowledge that is generated is shared nationally and may influence the development of maternal and child health policy and practice.
Categories Faculty and staff, Research