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Program Implementation Strategy

CMHS is developing a program implementation strategy that utilizes existing research and provides families, schools, and communities the opportunity to develop effective mental health and early intervention programs for the benefit of America's school children. The Violence Prevention/Enhancing Resilience Initiative will occur through a systematic plan to foster interagency collaboration by partnering with the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, and other Federal agencies. The CMHS and partners agree to:

• Actively use evidence-based practice in every phase of this initiative,
• Incorporate innovation and technology as critical components,

Components of the Program

Inter Departmental Grant Program
Mechanism: Competitive Grant Program, coordinated with the Department of Education and the Department of Justice.

School and Community Action Grants
Mechanism: Competitive Grant Program

Technical Assistance Partnership
Mechanism: Contract

Mechanism: Contract

Technology Innovation
Mechanism: Contract

Proposed Conferences
A Best Practices Summit

Strategies to Enhance Resilience and Prevent Violence: A Public Health Approach

Description of Program Components

1. Inter-Departmental Grant Program: Safe Schools, Healthy Students

An important purpose of the Inter-Departmental Grant Program is to provide a mechanism for school districts to access Federal funds from three Federal agencies concerned with promoting healthy child development and preventing violence in schools. For this reason, school districts would be allowed to apply for grants from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Justice using a single application. The SAMHSA/CMHS component of this initiative will provide support to approximately 50 school districts to implement the mental health preventive and treatment intervention services and early childhood psychological and emotional development portions of their Comprehensive Safe Schools, Healthy Students Strategic Plan. The grant program will:

• Promote the adoption and high fidelity implementation of evidence-based practices by the local education authority, public mental health authority, law enforcement entity, and other community agencies. These agencies should share responsibility for providing prevention and treatment services to address the educational, social, emotional, behavioral, and health needs of children and adolescents in order to reduce violence.
• Increase the efficacy of mental health services to children and adolescents through the integration, coordination, and resource sharing of mental health service providers in schools and other community-based programs.
• Reduce violence in schools through comprehensive prevention and treatment interventions that increase student learning and promote psychological competence forstudents at risk of violent behaviors.
• Reduce levels of inappropriate disciplinary actions in the schools by providing effective alternative interventions and strategies that promote and teach positive student behaviors.
• Each grant awarded will have a significant component of early childhood psychological and emotional development and mental health preventive and treatment interventions and will demonstrate the capacity to build and maintain a prevention mental health infrastructure targeting the mental health needs of preschoolers and school-aged children. Services will include early identification, assessment, and treatment. The grant program theme will highlight the considerable resilience and strengths of our children. The mental health component will be a powerful statement of the positive impact comprehensive mental health services can make on our youth.
• Special attention will focus on potential grant recipients who target services to traditionally underserved populations, i.e., minorities (Hispanics, African-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans) and/or to those in under served localities, i.e., rural, urban, and Tribal sites. Schools in suburban sites which are at high risk for violent activities are also encouraged to apply for the grants.

Evidence-Based Interventions must be used in the programs proposed. These interventions may include the model and promising programs proposed by the organizations described earlier in this paper. The list of these programs is not exhaustive; grantees may wish to use other programs. However, it is critical that, whatever the program used, it must have strong evaluation data substantiating its effectiveness. NIMH will be a supportive partner of CMHS in the evaluation component of this initiative.

2. School and Community Action Grants

Modeled after CMHS Community Action Grants, this component will give communities an opportunity to identify violence prevention/resilience development exemplary practices, sponsor development of a community-wide will to implement, and provide the community an opportunity to implement an exemplary program on a pilot basis. It will offer grantees an opportunity:

• to expand efforts at violence prevention among pre-school and school-aged youth beyond traditional educational, law enforcement, and mental health organizations,
• to develop the partnerships necessary to implement exemplary practices without competition, duplication, and fragmentation among child serving agencies, and
• to demonstrate the effectiveness of selected exemplary practices by funding pilot demonstrations in target communities.

3. Technical Assistance Partnership

This component of the Initiative will consist of a contract with a not-for-profit organization which will work with local community networks of families, schools, community agencies, businesses, faith-based organizations, medical and mental health professionals, the media, and other groups interested in supporting mental health treatment and prevention services on behalf of children. In addition to providing technical assistance to the grant component of this initiative via a consultant pool of experts and providing consultation to the public awareness campaign, this partnership would ensure that an evidence repository be made available to the interested public. This would be a central registry of evidence-based programs and dissemination models with a comprehensive mental health focus. This might involve developing a new registry or making links to existing data bases via the Internet and the CMHS web site, National Mental Health Information Center.

The Partnership could also help orchestrate a summit. The summit would be a two-day, National leadership round table and would include families and representatives from each State Governor's office, Mental Health, Education, Justice, Health, and Substance Abuse organizations. It would provide an opportunity to engage Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), and Tribal Colleges Schools of Education in relevant training activities. Regional focus groups with students, parents, and teachers prior to the summit, coupled with the inclusion of a youth summit, may be considered. Every effort will be made to collaborate with currently planned conferences on school violence prevention or related topics.

4. Public Education/Awareness Campaign

The Education/Awareness Program will be aimed at specific target audiences identified because of their potential for influencing children and parents, creating a more positive environment, and reducing school violence. These individuals and organizations include: behavioral health care professionals and educators, their professional societies, local and State school systems, other professional organizations (i.e., attorneys, pharmaceutical industry, nurses, etc.), the faith community, consumer groups, foundations, businesses, industry-wide associations, unions, local police and juvenile justice authorities, schools, and universities.

The Education/Awareness Program will rely on social marketing and evidence-based communications strategies that have been proven effective in improving public health, addressing mental health problems and issues, increasing resilience, and preventing or reducing violence and/or substance abuse. Plans are underway to obtain information on communications program planning for the school violence prevention initiative from senior Federal officials and members of firms with expertise in public relations, strategic development, niche marketing, community participation, and "teaching the teachers," and who also have a strong interest in mental health, public health, violence prevention, and/or substance abuse.

Traditional and innovative strategies for developing, testing, distributing, and assessing education/awareness messages will be employed. Vehicles for disseminating the messages may include: organization newsletters, annual meetings, and organization brochures and fact sheets incorporating information supplied by CMHS in an easily duplicated format; pre-packaged background information on the Initiative, possible comments, slides, and/or videos for presenters at meetings; print and broadcast media partnerships for a series of articles and/or shows; informational materials including brochures, pictures, graphs, audio visuals, and B-roll; a vast array of electronic communication vehicles, from websites to interactive video games and satellite links, and activities developed through community education and awareness partnerships. Through the outreach efforts of all of these groups, we would engage the media, behavioral health care professionals, children and their families, and educators, among others. A theme would be developed with a sustaining symbolism such as the GIRL POWER Initiative. Coordination of a Conference/Summit on preventing violence and fostering resilience with the Partnership Contract could be a significant component of this initiative.

5. Innovation and the Development of New Technologies

Among the most popular and captivating children’s activities on the market today are interactive entertainments. Anyone who has ever watched a child play a video game can bear witness to the powerful, nearly hypnotic effect it can have. Interactive video games offer unique advantages for delivering health promotion messages to children and adolescents. Although many of today's popular video games portray graphic violence and negative social stereotypes, video games can be designed to avoid these problems and, instead, promote desirable skills and learning. The video game format lends itself well to health promotion because games offer unlimited chances for repetition and rehearsal, and messages can be individualized to each player based on his or her performance in the game. To engage young people in health related behaviors while they play, video games can present appealing role models, provide scenarios that involve making health decisions, and depict realistic consequences in response to players' decisions and actions.

Many games have been developed to help children with chronic medical conditions such as diabetes learn to manage their health while having fun at home. Typically these "health games" feature a character who must complete a dangerous and urgent mission. The twist is that the main character has a chronic disease that must be successfully managed in order for the character to accomplish his task.

The objective of the violence prevention technology initiative is to develop interactive learning software on CD-ROM for students, teachers, and parents for use in both schools and homes. It is designed to assist in developing positive attitudes, providing adequate knowledge, and teaching effective skills to avoid and prevent violence. Expected outcomes for children, teachers and parents are as follows: (1) increased awareness of precursors of violence and of mental health aspects of violence; (2) increased knowledge of options for reducing and responding to violence and associated mental health difficulties, and (3) increased skills in the selection and use of options for responding to physical violence and associated mental health problems.

One of the exciting uses of technology in creating learning communities has been seen in schools tracking the day-to-day progress of events distant from the school. For example, children track the progress of astronauts, mountain climbers, and hot air balloonists as they travel around the world and in outer space. There is a sense of excitement and community that is generated when students, teachers and parents find themselves involved in an activity that is larger than their own schools and communities. The computer linked grantee network will allow program participants to problem-solve, follow the success of each site, and share information and resources about violence prevention.

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