MARTINSBURG — A number of programs and recovery centers have made it their life’s mission to address rural health needs in the Mountain State, from Mountaineer Recovery Center’s continuous expansion to include more and more groups to pilot programs aimed at bringing services to those who cannot travel to health centers.

In an effort to continue that work, it was announced this week Valley Health System — in partnership with Shepherd University and A Division for Advancing Prevention & Treatment, or ADAPT, at the University of Baltimore’s Center for Drug Policy and Enforcement — have been awarded an $1.5 million Behavioral Health Integration three-year grant for Project TRIUMPH, or ‘Train, Respect, Integrate, & Understand Mental Health for Population Health,’ from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration starting July 1.

“We are excited to have HRSA’s support to launch this truly collaborative model of behavioral health integration in the Eastern Panhandle,” Mark Nantz, President and CEO of Valley Health, said. “We have an exceptional opportunity to improve not only the whole health of individuals in the community through a population health approach, but also to transform how our current and future providers embrace behavioral health and substance use as key indicators of overall health and happiness.”

The Details

According to project leadership, the purpose of Project TRIUMPH is to increase access to behavioral health, substance use and suicide prevention services through three Valley Health primary care clinics and to develop the primary care practices as clinical education sites to train and prepare the future nursing and social work workforce in those communities through an academic-practice partnership with Shepherd University.

The grant will place the grant funded clinics at three primary care clinics: Valley Health Family Medicine on Tavern Rd; Valley Health Family Medicine in Hedgesville; and Valley Health Family Medicine in Martinsburg.

According to Lora Peppard, Director of ADAPT and project director, the three behavioral health care managers will work with nurse-led family medicine practices to provide screening, early intervention, and referral services for behavioral health, substance use and suicide risk, and coordinate psychiatric telehealth consultation to support the collaborative care model where all students will be actively involved.

“The clinics will prepare the future nursing and social work workforces by facilitating their competency in evidence-based practices for depression, anxiety, substance use, suicide prevention and telehealth technology,” the release said. “Through the academic-practice partnership with nearby Shepherd University, the Project TRIUMPH clinics will work to develop tomorrow’s workforce with the skillset and motivation to work in the prevention realm through specific curriculum instruction, while Shepherd University faculty support will further extend Project TRIUMPH’s impact.”

According to the release, over the next three years Project TRIUMPH expects to screen and offer appropriate interventions for 25,000 unique patients, ages 18 and over as well as train 60 nursing students and 50 social work students each year in inter-professional, behavioral health integration competencies, prevention, screening, intervention and referral practices.

Kelly Watson Huffer, coordinator for the social work and nursing education piece of the project and, associate professor in schooling of nursing, said both programs are very interested in addressing these rural health needs of the area and not only how to help the patient navigate the actual addiction arena but helping them with the challenges that face people in rural communities.

Watson Huffer added the clinics would focus on teaching students how to best serve rural communities, to reduce stigma and approach the patient from a patient-centered perspective.

“This model speaks to that and hopefully when we have students graduate they will be ready to stay in the community and fight this problem,” Watson Huffer said.

Why here?

According to the release, data shows a clear need for screening and referral for behavioral health and substance use disorder issues in Berkeley County, as shared in a 2017 community health needs assessment conducted by West Virginia University, which identified significant gaps in care in the county and the growing utilization of hospital emergency rooms to provide these services.

West Virginia ranks as a top state for the prevalence of adverse childhood events, and the incidence of suicide is 27% higher than the national rate, the release added.

“ADAPT’s mission is to support integration of evidence-based prevention practices and models into High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area communities like Berkeley County,” Peppard said. “Project TRIUMPH offers the next generation of integrated care model for secondary prevention, synthesizing key mental health, suicide, substance use, and social determinant practices into a robust collaborative care model. Valley Health has done an amazing job forging critical academic-practice partnerships to make this happen.”

Peppard added because Berkeley County is an inherently vulnerable community because of drug trafficking and social determinate means that are present, the fact that Valley Health is an early adopter of the behavioral health model to meet the needs of their community has only made the means of getting this project started even easier.

“When you bring these three variables together it’s why we went after the funding and why these particular communities are conducive to the work we are implementing there,” Peppard said.

The project’s administrator Karen Dorr, Executive Director of Behavioral Health Services at Valley Health Winchester Medical Center, agreed, adding that from the medical center’s side of things, leadership felt it was important to recognize the needs of the community, particularly in that many face a lack of accessibility to care, by zeroing in on the dual focus model: providing care for the patient while providing training and education for future healthcare providers.

In addition, the Behavioral Health Integration Manager, Summer Jeirles, emphasized that this model really focuses on prevention as much as crisis care, aiming to address people’s substance use, depression and anxiety while it might only be at a mild or moderate level.