Congratulations to Research Assistant Professor Dr. Anna Abella on receiving a USF New Researcher Grant. She and Co-PI Dr. Monica Landers will be measuring the impact of a pilot implementation of a co-responding telehealth model on officer confidence and competence in responding to mental health crises. The study, Evaluation of Officer Skill and Confidence in Addressing Mental Health Crises through the TRACE Program, will involve three specific aims:
- To develop a tool that measures the impact of the model on officer confidence and competence in responding to mental health calls.
- To examine partner perspectives of the functioning and effectiveness of the model.
- To analyze the behavioral health service environment to understand its capacity to establish clear pathways for accessing crisis and treatment services and supporting criminal justice diversion.
These results will contribute to an emerging literature on the impact of these models, and the survey developed through this study may potentially be used by other scholars and practitioners to assess the impact of other co-response models. The findings from this study will also provide insight into designing a comparative study to assess outcomes across different types of behavioral health response models and will inform subsequent grant applications.