Evaluating Orange County's Innovation and Prevention and Early Intervention Projects

In Orange County, California, an estimated 63,526 youth and adults under 200% of the Federal poverty level have serious mental illness or emotional disturbances. To reduce the burden of mental illness, Orange County has expanded its public mental health system through client/family-driven services for youth, adults, and seniors with funding from California's Mental Health Services Act (MHSA). As part of its comprehensive MHSA activities, Orange County's Health Care Agency is currently implementing 10 Innovation (INN) projects and 23 Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) projects. Innovations use a novel practice to contribute to learning. The county's INN projects seek to learn whether specially trained mental health consumers ("peers") can be effectively employed as paraprofessionals to provide mentorship and patient navigation services. Meanwhile, PEI projects use evidence-based practices to engage clients and families across the lifespan at risk of developing new mental health problems and prevent mental health conditions early in their manifestation from getting worse. Across these projects, special attention is paid to priority populations that are un-served or inappropriately served, including but not limited to, veterans and military families; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning populations; and persons who are deaf and hard of hearing. The INN and PEI projects are being systematically evaluated to determine which priority population(s) are being served and in what ways; how the projects are contributing to changes in the public mental health system; and individual-level improvements in quality of life. Process and outcome measures from a select number of projects will be shared.