Mentoring Grants from DOJ/OJJDP

The DoJ's OJJDP is sponsoring mentoring programs for high-risk youth, including adolescents with substance use problems who become involved with the justice system.

National Mentoring Program Grants

Link to full page:
Summary:
The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) will award $10 million to enable national organizations to provide mentoring services to special high-risk youth populations.
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From the solicitation:

This solicitation supports youth mentoring programs. Mentoring is a process designed to achieve specific goals, such as improved academic performance, social relationships, or job skills, and to support personal development. Mentoring uses relationships to impart changes in attitudes and behaviors. Effective mentoring programs include programs that match a mentor with one or more youth and can take place in multiple and informal settings, as well as in a school or program context. For the purpose of this solicitation, mentoring programs are defined as involving a structured relationship between an adult or trained peer, compensated or voluntary, and one or more youth, with one-on-one mentoring or group-mentoring being the preferred models. OJJDP-supported and other research and evaluation indicate that mentoring matches should be structured to support a relationship that lasts at least 12 months or through an entire school year. Research further finds that mentoring relationships that last 2 or more years increase positive outcomes for youth. Research also indicates that significant training for the mentor, oversight of the relationship, and data collection to track the relationship and its outcomes contribute to the structured support that is crucial to the mentoring relationship.

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The goal of this program is to reduce juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, truancy, and other problem and high-risk behaviors. The objective of this program is to provide direct one-on-one or group mentoring services to underserved youth populations [emphasis added]. Successful applicants should develop programs that will recognize and address the factors that can lead to or serve as a catalyst for delinquency or other problem behaviors in underserved youth (e.g., lack of education or employment opportunities, attitudes in the community or family that condone criminal activity, lack of parental supervision). Proposals should contain a description of all services that the applicant will provide to address these issues and their expected outcomes. In addition to the required semiannual progress reports in the Grants Management System (GMS), OJJDP will require successful applicants to produce a final report, suitable for publication, at the Office’s discretion.

The application deadline is 8:00pm ET, 25 Feb 2009.

Annual Project Advisory Board Survey

Dear T-ACT Project Advisory Board Member,

As most of you know, in January of each project year, the evaluation has administered a brief survey of PAB members' perceptions of the degree of coordination and strengths and challenges to coordination. Normally, this has occurred at the January PAB meeting, but this year, we will not have a meeting until March.

In order to collect this information, I'm sending you the following link to an on-line version of this survey:
Click Here to take survey.

For those who prefer to do this paper-and-pencil, you may download the questionnaire here, fill it out, and mail it or fax it to me at: 615-322-1141.

The favor of a reply is requested by January 22, 2009. Since these are intended to be anonymous and yet I want to avoid multiple mass emailings to the whole board, this will be the only email you receive about this survey. The survey should take between 5 and 10 minutes.

Thank you for your continued participation in and support of this project, and best wishes for a happy new year.

Robert Saunders

New Reports from NSDUH

SAMHSA's Office of Applied Studies has some new reports out based on the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). This one focuses on trends in use of marijuana by adolescents between 2002 and 2007.

You can find other OAS reports at http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/topics.cfm.

Telehealth in Hawaii

This item does not relate directly to adolescent substance abuse, but it does fit with our Project Advisory Board meeting in January 2008 on telehealth:

American Well, a Web service that puts patients face-to-face with doctors online, will be introduced in Hawaii on Jan 15.

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Patients use the service by logging on to participating health plans’ Web sites. Doctors hold 10-minute appointments, which can be extended for a fee, and can file prescriptions and view patients’ medical histories through the system. American Well is working with HealthVault, Microsoft’s electronic medical records service, and ActiveHealth Management, a subsidiary of Aetna, which scans patients’ medical history for gaps in their previous care and alerts doctors during their American Well appointment.

The Hawaiian health plan’s 700,000 members pay $10 to use the service. The insurer also offers the service to uninsured patients for $45. Health plans pay American Well a license fee per member and a transaction fee of about $2 each time a patient sees a doctor.

Hawaii is particularly well suited for online medicine because the islands are remote, it takes time to travel among them and it is difficult for the state to recruit doctors to rural areas, said Mike Stollar, vice president of marketing for the Hawaii Medical Service Association.

Hospitalization for Co-occurring Mood and Substance Disorders

A study in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health has found that having a comorbid substance use disorder is an important predictor of hospitalization for mood disorders and re-hospitalization within 3-months of discharge. 15% of of individuals with a mood disorder (major depressive, bipolar, or both) had a substance use disorder, but 36% of cases admitted to inpatient and over 50% re-admitted within 3 months of discharge had a co-occurring substance use disorder.

The study used 1999-2000 adult data from the California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Texas Medicaid systems, but the findings may be relevant for adolescent populations to the extent that mood and substance use disorders often have onset in adolescence and are not fully addressed before adulthood.