Project Summary

Fragmentation and lack of coordination between health care delivery, public health, and community service systems represent a significant barrier to improving health, well-being, and equity. Drawing from health care, public health, social work, criminology, health economics, and biomedical informatics, the investigators are investigating system-level strategies that achieve alignment, partnership and synergy across the delivery and financing systems for medical care, public health, and social and community services, specifically by:

• using Participatory Action Research methodologies to investigate and identify gaps in how multisector services, delivery systems, and financing streams are currently aligned;
• estimating and identifying redundancies, gaps, and bottle-necks in the current health system to understand the fragmented and siloed structure of health care for persons with behavioral health disorders; and
• triangulating multisector evidence regarding alignment of financing and delivery systems.

Principal Investigators

• William J. Riley, PhD, Professor, School for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Arizona State University
• Michael Shafer, PhD, Center Director, Center for Applied Behavioral Health Policy, School of Social Work, Arizona State University

Methodology

A natural experiment grounded in Community-Based Participatory Research, the mixed-methods research design includes structural equation modeling, social network analysis, and causal modeling.