Project 2: Identifying and Addressing Health Care Disparities Among Severely Mentally Ill Latinos and Black persons. This research program aims to generate new evidence on service use and quality of care for housed or homeless severely mentally ill Latino and Black persons, and generate specific recommendations aimed at better meeting treatment needs and narrowing observed disparities. Analyses focus on two data sets: Access to Community Care and Effective Services and Support (ACCESS) quasi-experimental program, and Florida Medicaid claims data for the period 1994-2006.

Pilot 1: Ethnic Differences in Perceived Impairment and Need for Care. This pilot investigates whether there are cultural differences between non-Latino white, Latino, and island Puerto Rican providers and parents in their assessments of vignettes of youth impairment, the severity of the behaviors, and the need for mental health treatment. The goal is to assess whether differential behaviors and severity thresholds relate to mental health service disparities for Latino youth.

Pilot 2: Dialogue with the Latino Community and Healthcare System Stakeholders for Identifying Quality Improvements. The focus of this pilot is on understanding the experience of health care reform in Massachusetts for Latino consumers who were previously funded by the uncompensated care pool. We will explore the processes for integrating community knowledge and expertise about Latino mental health needs in a safety net health care system in order to develop quality improvement projects and interventions that will improve services and reduce mental health service disparities.