What Are The Novel Methods And Approaches You Are Using To Actively Engage Your Community?

"What are the novel methods and approaches you are using to actively engage your community?"

Ultimately, all of our work aims to better our communities. Given all we ask of our local community in service of these efforts (e.g., time, vulnerability, trust), like so many labs we actively look for opportunities to give back. Throughout the year we will take part in fundraising walks, and partner with our Psi Chi chapter to support a rotating selection of activities determined by the current composition of each team. The activity that I am most proud of, however, is our annual Mental Health Awareness event in May. The team spends at least the full Spring semester working to organize activities, collaborative information packets, and raffle donations (a great way to get folks to stop and listen!). The event is two days on our local square (the heartbeat of any Texas town) where we share resources, basic wellness activities, research opportunities, and simply seek to reduce stigma around the discussion of mental health issues. We just wrapped up our fourth year; I am immeasurably proud of the students who make this all happen and look forward to our next MHA event in 2020!

I serve on Rio Salado College’s Incarcerated Programs and Reentry Committee. In my service I found that large numbers of incarcerated students cannot access required course textbooks; either because of accessibility and/or financial issues. Last spring, I was awarded a grant funding the design and development of textbook-less addiction courses for incarcerated students. These textbook-less courses are accessible to most of our incarcerated student population.  The textbook-less courses gives hundreds of incarcerated students accessibility to Rio Salado College’s entire Addiction and Substance Use Disorder Program.  

Up until about a year ago, NYS OASAS prohibited off-site treatment. Now that we can offer services in the community, Innovative Health Systems has reached out to a local shelter, a neighborhood health center and a church with a large underserved Latino population to provide services to people residing, seeking medical care and parishioners. This effort is in line with the Harm Reduction principle of "meeting the patient where s/he is at." Not entirely new but a new opportunity for us become more available to the community at large. 

For the coming issue, we want to hear about what responsibility, if any, do you think we as addiction psychologists have to the community? Please limit responses to 200 words and send to dana.litt@unthsc.edu by October 1, 2019