Supporting post-disaster recovery and resilience in New Orleans and beyond through community-academic partnerships

Community-academic partnerships are a promising strategy for developing community resilience in post-disaster settings.  In this presentation, we will highlight lessons learned through partnered development of several initiatives to promote community recovery and reduce place-based disparities in mental health in New Orleans.  Our 2-year Mental Health Infrastructure and Training Project (MHIT), developed local capacity to offer high quality, culturally appropriate mental health services to underserved communities.  Academic partners provided technical expertise to train clinical providers in evidence-based care models.  Community partners led development of a curriculum to prepare community health workers (CHWs) to provide social support to clients and collaborate with clinicians.  After training several hundred personnel and providing over 110,000 client services, we parlayed our work into additional sustainable efforts to increase community resilience locally and nationally.  Behavioral health services and CHWs have been integrated into local primary care practices including patient-centered medical homes, and Tulane medical residents are trained in these integrated care models. Community desire for CHW professional development opportunities led academic institutions and community groups to collaboratively develop a local CHW professional group and an 80-hour competency-based CHW training program.  Dozens of program graduates now support underserved communities through health education, outreach, and advocacy for improving social determinants of health.  Community-academic partnerships have adapted MHIT materials for use in California, in a national HRSA-funded program to integrate behavioral health-focused CHWs into primary care settings, and throughout the U.S. to train lay care providers in faith based settings.  Our strategies for developing resilience may apply to other settings.