Policy Research's 2022 Year in Review Scroll to learn more

Criminal Legal System/Justice

• Completed 40 Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) Mapping Workshops, 2 SIM Summits (Minnesota and Kansas), and 6 SIM facilitator trainings, reaching approximately 2,000 people. Policy Research also completed 21 How Being Trauma-Informed Improves Criminal Justice System Responses Train-the-Trainer events, reaching approximately 450 people.
• Hosted a national Policy Academy that assisted five state teams with coordinating and collaborating among 988 lifeline and 911 dispatch/public safety answering points to support the national rollout and implementation of 988 (i.e., the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) in July. SAMHSA’s GAINS Center worked with teams and cross-system groups from California, Colorado, Georgia, Maine, and Missouri to develop and enhance strategies to support coordination efforts during and post-roll out.
• Engaged 24 state and local teams via SAMHSA’s GAINS Center’s Learning Collaboratives. The Learning Collaboratives addressed four topics: integrating civilian-led, co-response, and specialized police response models, risk assessment and competence restoration, transition reentry strategies, and equity and inclusion in adult drug courts.
• Provided technical assistance to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge through the IMPACT Network, a behavioral health-focused cohort of 11 sites. The IMPACT Network uses a peer-to-peer model to maximize what SJC sites have learned about accelerating behavioral health reform and diversion across the criminal legal system.
• Hosted the Policing and People with Developmental Disabilities: Emerging Issues in the Field webinar in April with 843 attendees via the Academic Training Initiative to Inform Police Responses team (Policy Research, University of Cincinnati, The ARC, IACP).

Housing and Income Supports

• Celebrated 8 years with 14,226 successful course completions of the SAMHSA SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR) Technical Assistance (TA) Center’s SOAR Online Course: Adult Curriculum. The SOAR Online Course: Child Curriculum celebrated 4 years with 761 successful course completions.
• Achieved 2,920 approvals on SOAR-assisted initial SSI/SSDI applications. Decisions were received in an average of 153 days with an allowance rate of 68%.
• Launched three SAMHSA Homeless and Housing Resource Center (HHRC) online courses on the topics of treatment models, serious mental illness, and opioid use disorder. For all four available courses, there were 1,218-course completions.
• Made 33,878 impressions with human service providers via SOAR TA events, SOARing Over Lunch Calls, emails, and phone calls. The SOAR TA Center facilitated a SOAR State Team Lead Leadership Academy, welcoming 39 State Team Leads to discuss SOAR strategies and best practices. HHRC made 23,589 impressions via 20 webinars.
• Ensured racial equity in the review and award of small grant research stipends via the Analyzing Relationships Between Disability, Rehabilitation, and Work (ARDRAW) program. The program increased and improved outreach and awareness of ARDRAW funding opportunities to reach a more diverse set of researchers and included additional Black, Indigenous, and people of color in award decision-making positions. These recruitment efforts resulted in 17 awards to racially diverse students.

Research and Evaluation

• Began a State Justice Institute-funded project to identify court navigator programs that connect court-involved persons to behavioral health services in the community. The team has spoken to innovative navigator programs across the country to determine what programs exist, and how they function.
• Rejuvenated Policy Research’s focuses on children and youth by collaborating with the University of California, Los Angeles, and the American Civil Liberties Union to learn about the costs and benefits of social change work throughout adolescence and young adulthood. This work is funded by AmeriCorps.
• Started a 5-year evaluation of the California Department of State Hospitals’ (DSH) Felony Mental Health Diversion Programs. The Felony Mental Health Diversion Programs comprise a robust continuum of care, including diversion, early access to treatment and care coordination, and other DSH-funded community-based programs.

Service Members, Veterans, and their Families

• Engaged 30 new communities across the country via Crisis Intercept Mapping (CIM) Workshops. Participating communities created local crisis system maps and action plans for suicide prevention within the crisis care continuum.
• Welcomed 15 new states and territories in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)/SAMHSA’s Governor’s Challenge to Prevent Suicide Among SMVF (Governor’s Challenge). The TA Center worked with each state to form interagency, military and civilian state teams and worked with VA and SAMHSA to identify each team’s suicide prevention action plan priority areas, including screening and assessment, promoting connectedness, and lethal means safety.
• Hosted one virtual Implementation Academy, two Policy Academies (one virtual, one hybrid), and one, in-person Innovations Conference as part of the TA Center's Governor’s Challenge work. The meetings provided opportunities for engagement with subject-matter experts and collaboration across state/territory teams to support SMVF suicide prevention planning and implementation.
• Mentioned twice in the White House’s newly released Reducing Military and Veteran Suicide: Advancing a Comprehensive, Cross-Sector, Evidence-Informed Public Health Strategy. The TA Center’s work was highlighted in Priority Goals 2 and 4.
• Conducted 3 national webinars, 3 learning communities, 40 TA calls, 3 Communities of Practice, and 12 topical Governor’s Challenge Team Leader calls.

• A Toolkit for Engaging with Native Communities (SOAR)
• Applicant Self-Help Guide (SOAR)
• Comparing the Relationships Between Money Bail, Pretrial Risk Scores, and Pretrial Outcomes (Research and Evaluation)
• Conversations on Leadership Podcast Series: The Transition | The Future of PRA | Pam’s Reflection on 35 Years (PRA)
• Guide to Methamphetamine Use, Treatment and Housing Considerations for People Experiencing Homelessness: English | Spanish (HHRC)
• Honor and Service: National Veterans and Military Families Month 2022 (SMVF)
• Leveraging the Opportunity for 988 in Your Community (GAINS)
• Mindfulness Exercises: Vagus Nerve Reset | Body Scan | Emotional Freedom Technique (PRA)
• National Guidelines for Post-Conviction Risk and Needs Assessment (Research and Evaluation)
• State Strategies to Address the Crisis in the Competence to Stand Trial and Competence Restoration Systems (GAINS)

Criminal Justice/Criminal Legal System

• Hosting two topical Policy Academies and five topical Learning Collaboratives via SAMHSA’s GAINS Center. These initiatives will engage over 30 teams from across the country in targeted and collaborative learning opportunities to better serve people with behavioral health conditions who come into contact with the adult criminal legal system.
• Hosting 13 Train-the-Trainer (TTT) events via the GAINS Center’s How Being Trauma-Informed Improves Criminal Justice System Responses national training program. Through this initiative, 400 participants from across the country will become certified trainers in the program. Trauma training helps professionals who work in the criminal legal and behavioral health systems understand the role trauma plays in the lives of people with whom they interact, understand behavior using a trauma-informed lens, and use that understanding to respond to behavior in a trauma-informed manner.
• Releasing the national Crisis Response and Intervention Training (CRIT) program, funded by the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) through the Academic Training to Inform Police Responses initiative. This initiative is operated by Policy Research with partners at the University of Cincinnati, the National Policing Institute, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and The Arc. The CRIT program will include all the tools necessary to train local law enforcement in the CRIT model.
• Continuing Policy Research's training and technical assistance efforts with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge jurisdictions through the end of 2024.

Housing & Income Supports

• Developing new ways to share information from the SOAR Online Courses via video and audio clips to highlight key information and topics.
• Expanding efforts to increase the utilization of SOAR with peer support workers through the development of national collaborations and promoting SOAR with peer certification programs.
• Wrapping up the final cohort of the ARDRAW contract. Cohort 6 is the largest cohort to date, with 17 funded students. The awarded researchers will submit their final papers in June 2023.
• Developing two self-paced, free online training courses for the HHRC training library. One course will be on trauma-informed outreach and engagement, and the other will be on housing supports for methamphetamine users.
• Releasing two of HHRC’s foundational online courses in Spanish—Introduction to Housing Models, Navigation, and Engagement, and Introduction to Treatment Models and Engagement.
• Updating and re-releasing SAMHSA’s Supportive Housing Toolkit through HHRC.

Research and Evaluation

• Launching the first phase of the California Department of State Hospitals Felony Mental Health Diversion evaluation.
• Finalizing the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur-funded multisite evaluation of programs to reduce criminal legal system involvement for people who come into frequent contact with the system.
• Completing a multisite evaluation of the process and impact of issuing citations in lieu of arrests for misdemeanor crimes.
• Continuing research aimed at identifying strategies to reduce detention and increase racial equity in pretrial judgments.
• Beginning the first phase of data collection for the AmeriCorps Young Social Change Agents research project.

Service Members, Veterans, and their Families

• Engaging 30 new communities in Crisis Intercept Mapping Workshops. In addition, the SMVF TA Center will facilitate 40 TA calls, 3 national webinars, and 3 learning communities.
• Welcoming the final 3 states, 1 territory, and the District of Columbia in the VA/SAMHSA Governor’s and Mayor’s Challenge to Prevent Suicide among SMVF. Each new team will create a statewide action plan for SMVF suicide prevention with assistance from the SMVF TA Center.
• Working with 15 state and territory teams in the Implementation Academy process. These teams will develop implementation plans for strategies under each of the 3 priority areas—identify and screen for suicide risk, promote connectedness and improve care transition, and increase lethal means safety and safety planning.
• Convening two topical conferences spotlighting best and emerging practices from across the country, developing a toolkit focused on utilizing data to engage diverse SMVF populations, and creating a virtual training series highlighting best practices for engaging Indigenous communities in local and state suicide prevention efforts.