Community-Academic Partnership for Collaborative Care

Our case definition is a community-academic partnership to build capacity for collaborative care between 2017 and 2020 (49 (link)). We used Kohrt's et al. (22 (link)) recommendations for mapping community-based mental health care to generate the case description: Our partnership included two applied research centers at the University of Washington (UW) and a social service community-based organization (El Sol Neighborhood Educational Center; “El Sol”) that trains promotores de salud [community health workers/promotores (CHWs/Ps)] to improve access to and quality of social service care for underserved communities in the Inland Empire region of California. El Sol, a CBO committed to community transformation and social change, prioritizes reaching mono-lingual Spanish speakers, immigrants, and other LEP residents. Two CHWs/Ps were trained to deliver PEARLS to older adults in their homes. The depression care management (implementation) team included the CHWs/Ps, a program manager/CHW/P supervisor at the community-based organization, and a licensed mental health therapist and a psychiatric assistant at local partner organizations. The research center role was to provide content and quality improvement expertise via practice coaching (“external facilitation”) (50 (link)) and project oversight. PEARLS participants were primarily Spanish-speaking Mexican-American immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for over 10 years. These older adults were living in poverty with multiple chronic conditions and poor access to quality health care. PEARLS participant engagement occurred through healthy aging presentations at low-income housing, social service agencies, and health care organizations, where participants received fresh fruit and vegetable boxes and completed brief depression screening to assess eligibility.