Research

Fathers for Change is a unique intervention that focuses on the paternal role throughout treatment, combining attachment, family systems, and cognitive behavioral theory and techniques to decrease violence and aggression, alcohol and substance abuse, and negative parenting behaviors.

Principal Investigator: Carla Stover, PhD
Funding Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse

Hillsborough County has identified a gap in treatment for dependency drug cases that require more intensive substance abuse services and more structured referral services to adequately address the issues of the clients in the dependency drug court. Due to the specialized needs of this population, an assertive treatment modality is necessary to effectively respond to the increasing population of caregivers and their dependents that are affected by substance abuse issues. The purpose of the Tampa DDC program is to (1) provide enhanced services to parents alleged to have neglected their children as a result of alcohol or other drug use, (2) ensure the safety and well-being of children, and (3) family reunification.

Principal Investigator: Kathleen Moore, PhD
Co-PI: M. Scott Young, PhD
Dates: 09/30/2006 - 09/29/2013

USF will provide on-the-job training, coaching and consultation services to staff in DCF Circuit 1 (Pensacola area) based on the Family Engagement model.

Principal Investigator: Laurie Cunningham, MS
Funding Agency: Lakeview Center, Inc
Award Amount: $56,872
Dates: 03/16/2010 - 06/30/2010

Mental Health Law and Policy provides pre-service and staff development training to child welfare professionals in District 4.

Principal Investigator: Laurie Cunningham, MS
Funding Agency: Family Support Services of North Florida, Inc.
Award Amount: $404,905
Dates: 07/01/2006 - 09/30/2007

The purpose of this grant of Dr. James McHale, Director of the Family Study Center at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, is to conduct a randomized controlled trial for his Figuring It Out for the Child (FIOC) prenatal co-parenting intervention for African American families. Dr. McHale's intervention has received support from key African American stakeholders in St. Petersburg, Florida's health and human service and faith-based communities as a way to improve communication and parenting skills among unmarried fathers and mothers to improve outcomes for their children.

Principal Investigator: Carla Stover, PhD
Funding Agency: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)

Through a contract with the Florida Department of Children and Families, faculty have implemented statewide training on Baker Act (civil commitment) procedures in Florida, including those related to involuntary outpatient placement.

Our Baker Act on-line training enables anyone wishing to learn about the Florida Baker Act law to learn on his or her own time using our on-line and self-directed learning environment. Please visit http://www.bakeracttraining.org/ for information on how to register for the on-line training.

To purchase a printed and bound copy of the 2011 Baker Act Manual, click here to order directly through Procopy.

Principal Investigator: Annette Christy, PhD
Affiliated Research Faculty / Staff: Robert Killinger, MBA
                                                             Beverly Crockett
Funding Agency: Department of Children and Families
Award Amount: $497,214
Dates: 11/21/2008 - 06/30/2011

The Behavioral Pharmacy Management Program (BPMP) is a collaborative between the USF, the AHCA and the pharmaceutical industry. It is a multi-year, program designed to improve the quality of prescribing practices for mental health drugs and to reduce expenditures by $34 million. This is accomplished through a series of progressively intensive interventions with the approximately 25,000 physicians that write prescriptions for mental health drugs in the state's Medicaid system. The interventions are prospective, developing treatment guidelines for schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder and educating providers about them, retrospective, reviewing prescribing behavior against guideline consistent quality edits and providing appropriate feedback and concurrent, providing physicians with access to individual patient drug histories, guidelines and quality edits e and prescription writing capability at the point of car through PDA's and desk top applications. All interventions are designed to increase the extent to which prescribing is consistent with evidence based guidelines. The BPMP is currently being evaluated by the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences.

Principal Investigator: Robert Constantine, PhD
Award Amount: $4,309,206
Dates: 09/01/2004 - 02/28/2007

Principal Investigator:  Marie McPherson, MBA
Funding Agency:  Florida Department of Health

Under contract with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) and funded by a two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the Florida Mental Health Institute (FMHI) at the University of South Florida served as the coordinating center for the Florida Partnership for Collegiate Success Initiative (CSI: Florida). The CSI Project mobilized community partnerships to reduce past 30-day use of alcohol and binge drinking among underage (ages 18 to 20) college students on and off campus. CSI's four collaboratives consisted of four state universities: Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, and University of South Florida as well as affiliated community/state colleges, each of which partnered with substance abuse prevention coalitions in their respective counties: Leon, Orange, Alachua, and Hillsborough. These four collaboratives developed and implemented environmental strategies to deter risky drinking practices among underage college students, using evidence-based practices. Administration of the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, a required indicator for each collaborative, was administered to college students in 2012 and 2013 in the four counties. Data from the Core Survey resulted in two recent publications:

Hagman, B., Cohn, A., Schonfeld, L., Moore, K., and Barrett, B.T. (2014) Alcohol and illicit drug use correlates of college students who endorse a sub-threshold number of alcohol use disorder criteria: The new DSM-5 diagnostic orphan. American Journal on Addictions, 23, 378–385.  DOI: 10.1111/j.1521-0391.2014.12120.x

McBride, N., Barrett, B., Moore, K., and Schonfeld, L. (2014) The role of positive alcohol expectancies in underage binge drinking among college students. American Journal of College Health, 62(6), 370-379. DOI: 10.1080/07448481.2014.907297

Principal Investigator: Lawrence Schonfeld, PhD
Dates: 07/01/2012 - 06/30/2015

Creation of a web site for the TA Center. It is essential for grantees and others to be able to retrieve information quickly and reliably about best practices, services of the TA Center, on-line training, and other resources that may be available within Florida and nationally.

Creation of web-based training for mental health and criminal justice professionals. Mental health and substance use professionals are asked increasingly to work with clients who are involved with the criminal justice system. Yet such professionals rarely receive any training regarding the criminal justice system. Similarly, many criminal justice professionals now work with individuals with serious mental disorders, yet training on mental disorders is seldom available. We will develop web-based training modules to meet these needs. 

Provide consultation to local governments regarding data system issues. Many of the TA Center’s functions require data analysis. We propose to work with the Council to provide a template for data collection (what types of data should be collected that are relevant to planning and implementing grant initiatives; for the creation of good data systems; and ultimately for uploading data directly to the TA Center for analysis).

Development of a cost model for use in assessing the impact of grantee interventions. While public policy gets made for any number of reasons, a frequently asked question is whether an intervention is cost effective. Yet there are few good cost studies in the area of mental disorder and criminal justice, in part because of the comparative absence of good models for measuring and assessing cost. The task is complicated by the number of entities that might be involved in attempting a specific intervention, for example when the object of the intervention is to reduce the use of jails (as it is here), because those different entities may have varying definitions and expectations regarding the costs and benefits of a specific intervention. We will take work that has been done in this area, for example, in the State of Washington, and refine it to create a cost model that can be applied in assessing interventions funded by these grants. We propose to do this by using FMHI faculty (which includes an economist) in conjunction with individuals who have experimented with various cost models nationally.

Development of local technical assistance experts. The TA center will be available to grantees for on-site community collaboration building, system mapping, strategic planning and program evaluation.

Principal Investigator: John Petrila, JD, LLM
Affiliated Research Faculty / Staff: Mark A. Engelhardt, MS, MSW, ACSW
Funding Agency: JEHT Foundation
Dates: 11/01/2008 - 06/30/2013

FMHI Mental Health Law and Policy will assist DCF to develop train the trainer curriculum for the new child welfare case management tracking system.

Principal Investigator: Laurie Cunningham, MS
Funding Agency: Department of Children and Families
Award Amount: $21,900
Dates: 07/06/2007 - 10/31/2007

This project will use a state-wide substance abuse treatment database to compare users of marijuana only to poly-substance marijuana users.

Principal Investigator: M. Scott Young, PhD
Funding Agency: Marijuana Policy Project
Award Amount: $46,383
Dates: 01/01/2004 - 06/05/2005

The purpose of this grant of Dr. James McHale, Director of the Family Study Center at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, is to conduct a randomized controlled trial for his Figuring It Out for the Child (FIOC) prenatal co-parenting intervention for African American families. Dr. McHale's intervention has received support from key African American stakeholders in St. Petersburg, Florida's health and human service and faith-based communities as a way to improve communication and parenting skills among unmarried fathers and mothers to improve outcomes for their children.

Principal Investigator: Carla Stover, PhD
Funding Agency: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)

Florida Forensic Examiner Training is a legislatively authorized three-day training series that has been provided by the Department since 1986. This is designed to train mental health professionals on how to conduct evaluations for the criminal courts, and focuses on issues related to competency and sanity evaluations, forensic assessment and report writing, and expert testimony. The Department also offers workshops related to child custody evaluations and forensic evaluation within the juvenile justice system.

Principal Investigator: Randy K. Otto, PhD, ABPP

This project involves the development and implementation of a 9-week Summer Research Institute at FMHI. Co-PIs Catherine Batsche, Roger Boothroyd, Amber Gum National Science Foundation

Principal Investigator: Paul Stiles, JD, PhD
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Award Amount: $315,000
Dates: 03/01/2006 - 02/28/2009

The objective of this study is to better understand the characteristics and processes of guardianship for persons with mental illnesses.

Funding Agency: National Institute of Mental Health
Award Amount: $100,000
Dates: 03/01/2002 - 02/28/2005

The focus of this study will be the impact of different antipsychotic medication on the healthcare services utilization of adults with a serious mental illness and children with a severe emotional disturbance.

Principal Investigator: Robert Constantine, PhD
Affiliated Research Faculty / Staff: John Robst, PhD
Funding Agency: Bristol-Myers Squibb
Award Amount: $300,000
Dates: 12/10/2007 - 12/09/2008

This project is to provide the evaluation for the Healthy Families Healthy Children program of the Jewish Family and Children's Services of Sarasota-Manatee, Inc. (JFCS) funded by the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance. The project is designed to prepare unwed low-income parenting or expectant couples for successful healthy marriages. JFCS will implement healthy marriage activities for low-income, unwed expectant or new parents.

MHLP ROLE
The FMHI Evaluation team will work with the clinical and administrative staff of JFCC to establish project milestones and expected project outcomes and collect, analyze and report data.

Principal Investigator: Colleen Clark, PhD
Co-PI: M. Scott Young, PhD
Funding Agency: Jewish Family & Children's Center of Sarasota & Manatee
Award Amount: $142,802
Dates: 10/01/2006 - 09/30/2011

Pre-service training and certification for newly hired Heartland staff.

Principal Investigator: John Talone, BA
Funding Agency: Heartland for Children, Inc.
Award Amount: $424,200
Dates: 07/01/2006 - 06/07/2007

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation of an evidence-based practice, namely, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) for adult homeless persons who have a severe and persistent mental illness. In collaboration with Mental Health Care, Inc. over the five-year term of the grant 90 people will be served and evaluated regarding housing, employment, mental health status, and treatment services.

MHLP ROLE
Project Evaluator and responsible for the overall evaluation of the project that includes a baseline, 6-month, and 12-month follow-up

Principal Investigator: Colleen Clark, PhD
Co-PI: M. Scott Young, PhD
Co-PI: Kathleen Moore, PhD
Funding Agency: SAMHSA/CSAT program, contract with Mental Health Care, Inc.
Award Amount: $200,000
Dates: 07/01/2005 - 06/30/2010

The Hillsborough Data Collaborative (HDC) is an initiative which is expected to inform policy makers in deciding cirtical resource and programmatic decisions and establish a data collaborative.

Principal Investigator: Lisa Holcomb,
Funding Agency: Hillsborough County
Award Amount: $45,000
Dates: 10/01/2007 - 09/30/2008

The Hillsborough County Discharge Planning Program (HCDPP) is a project that involves creating and evaluating discharge planning services within the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Detention facilities. The services will be for individuals with moderate to severe mental illness. The FMHI evaluation of the HCDPP program will focus on both process measures and program outcomes and will include collection of both qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The FMHI researchers will actively participate in federally sponsored evaluation efforts, and will collect performance measures in accordance with the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).

The process evaluation will assist the HCDPP to assess the effectiveness of program implementation during the critical first 20 months of operation, and to provide recommendations for improving key program functions and activities such as referral, screening and assessment, and case management services. The outcome evaluation will assist in determining the program’s effectiveness in influencing criminal recidivism, program completion, number and type of service referrals, retention in mental health and related treatment, and operational outcomes related to community partnerships and programs. Data obtained from the HCDPP evaluation will be used to modify program components, procedures, and approaches, and to justify continuation or expansion of the program. Consumer representatives will participate in the evaluation design and in the dissemination of evaluation results. 

Funding Agency: US Department of Justice
Award Amount: $31,500
Dates: 09/01/2006 - 08/31/2009

Principal Investigator:  Kathleen Moore, PhD
Funding Agency: 13th Judicial Court Hillsborough County

The purpose of the Enhanced Jail Diversion Program (EJDP) is to expand the existing Hillsborough County mental health jail diversion program to divert adults with serious mental illness or co-occurring disorders from the criminal justice system to community-based services prior to arrest and booking, with special consideration for veterans and active military members.  USF is the project evaluator, responsible for developing a system and/or process that captures all necessary relevant data to the program evaluation; generating reports for program management and improvement; providing data and other information for SAMHSA required reporting; and investigating issues related to program process and outcomes.

Principal Investigator:  Annette Christy, PhD
Funding Agency:  SAMHSA / Hillsborough County

To provide jail diversion services for adults with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders who have had three prior arrests in the last year using a modified assertive community treatment model. The goal of the program is to engage these adults into continuous treatment relationships, reduce substance abuse, minimize mental health symptoms, and increase housing stability.

MHLP ROLE
Responsible for the overall evaluation of the project that includes a baseline, 6-month, and 12-month follow-up.

Co-PI: Kathleen Moore, PhD
Funding Agency: Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT)
Award Amount: $150,806
Dates: 05/01/2006 - 04/29/2010

Pre-service training and certification for newly hired HKI staff.

Principal Investigator: John Mullins, BA
Funding Agency: HKI
Award Amount: $105,496
Dates: 01/16/2006 - 06/30/2006

Under this contract an enhanced Supervising for Excellence Training is provided  to supervisors and managers of Hillsborough Kids, Inc.  This 9 day training is provided by a Master Trainer, along with needed support services.

Principal Investigator: Laurie Cunningham, MS
Award Amount: $47,968
Dates: 08/30/2007 - 06/30/2009

A pilot study to conduct home-based assessments of diversion-eligible youth ages 15 years and younger who are substance-use involved. The assessment covers four areas of lift functioning (drug/alcohol use, use of free time, peer relationaships, and mental health) and is conducted before and upon completion of the diversion program.

Principal Investigator: Kathleen Moore, PhD
Funding Agency: Hillsborough County Children's Board
Award Amount: $20,000
Dates: 01/01/2002 - 03/31/2004

The focus of this study is the impact of various medications on healthcare service utilization of adults with serious mental illness.

Principal Investigator: Robert Constantine, PhD
Funding Agency: Orth-McNeil Janssen Scientific Affairs
Award Amount: $101,816
Dates: 11/30/2007 - 07/31/2008

The focus of this study is the impact of different antipsychotic medication on the healthcare servcies utilization of adults with a serious mental illness and children with a severe emotional disturbance.

Principal Investigator: Robert Constantine, PhD
Co-PI: John Robst, PhD
Funding Agency: Bristol-Myers Squibb
Award Amount: $300,000
Dates: 12/10/2006 - 12/01/2008

Principal Investigator: Kathryn Rost, PhD
Funding Agency: NIMH
Award Amount: $1,203,031
Dates: 03/07/2011 - 11/30/2013

The overarching, long-term career goal of the candidate is to run her own clinical laboratory to develop best practice treatment approaches for families impacted by intrafamilial violence. The immediate career goals of this K23 award will aid the candidate in development of independent skills in: 1) substance abuse and violence assessment, 2) the stage model of psychotherapy development, 3) treatment evaluation (including longitudinal, multisite data collection and analysis, and 4) qualitative and treatment fidelity measurement.

Principal Investigator: Carla Stover, PhD
Funding Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Award Amount: $171,991
Dates: 08/07/2013 - 08/07/2014

The purpose of the Veteran Justice Outreach Initiative (VJO) initiative is to avoid the unnecessary criminalization of mental illness and extended incarceration among Veterans by ensuring that eligible justice-involved Veterans have timely access to VHA mental health and substance abuse services when clinically indicated, and other VA services and benefits as appropriate.

VA is requiring justice-focused activity at the medical center level.  VA Medical Centers have been strongly encouraged to develop working relationships with the court system and local law enforcement and must now provide outreach to justice-involved Veterans in the communities they serve.

Each VA medical center has been asked to designate a facility-based Veterans’ Justice Outreach Specialist, responsible for direct outreach, assessment, and case management for justice-involved Veterans in local courts and jails, and liaison with local justice system partners.

Funding Agency: Veterans Administration via The National Center on Homeless Among VeteransAward
Amount: $100,000
Dates: 10/01/2009 - 09/30/2010