SBIRT History
I n 2013 Dr. Daniel Santisteban and Dr. Maite Mena, faculty at the School of Education and Human Development (SEHD), wanted to contribute to local efforts aimed at integrating physical and mental health. Rather than addressing the different sides of an individual separately, integration involves always considering the whole person, including the physical and psychological dimensions.
So in 2013 they brought funding to the South Florida community to help make this a reality locally. Together with an important set of partners in the community, they were awarded a grant by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) and were successful in bringing in close to one million dollars for a three year training program. The grant funded SBIRT and Motivational Interviewing training to a diverse set of healthcare students in the classrooms (Psychological Counseling, Nursing, Social Work) and healthcare workers in community practice settings.
years of experience
In 2016, Dr. Mena was funded by the Health Foundation of South Florida through the Live Healthy Little Havana Initiative for a grant “Building capacity for the adoption of Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment in Little Havana.” The purpose of the grant was to build capacity for the establishment and sustainability of SBIRT as a standard of care for identifying individuals who are at risk for mounting medical, social, and/or behavioral consequences due to their risky use of alcohol and/or illicit drugs at providers in the Little Havana area. Dr. Mena worked directly with 6 providers in Little Havana and provided SBIRT initial trainings, booster trainings, coaching of SBIRT practice, and implementation consultation to enhance current practices and improve sustainability of SBIRT
Most recently in 2019, Dr. Mena was funded by the Health Foundation of South Florida through Live Healthy Miami Gardens for a grant “Building Capacity for SBIRT Implementation in Miami Gardens”. This project seeks to build capacity at a minimum of 5 Miami Gardens based community agencies to implement SBIRT in a manner that is sustainable, feasible, and that ultimately leads to the improved health and wellness of the Miami Gardens community.
The 5 organizations are Center for Child and Family Enrichment, Concerned African Women, Optimal Health, Fresh Start, and Federation of Families, each serve vulnerable populations ranging in age from 12 and up. These organizations serve primarily minority, low income populations. Additional organizations in Miami Gardens who serve similar populations may be engaged.
The key activities of this project were to enlist a minimum of 5 Miami Gardens organizations to implement SBIRT with fidelity and to build the capacity of the organizations to adopt policies and procedures that will maintain the SBIRT practice after the grant period has ended. Implementation of this project entailed several steps, for example, creating an implementation team at each organization, work flow plans, tailored implementation plans, training, and coaching. The grant focused on building capacity for long term sustainability and worked directly with supervisors to become competent to coach and monitor fidelity. Additional work with technology led to online support systems with capability to build competence, not simply knowledge, to conduct each step of SBIRT. This has and will ameliorate consequences due to staff turnover. Finally, a Peer Learning Collaborative (online and in-person) was developed and all organizations implementing SBIRT participated in order to create a network of peer support.