Building community resilience through mental health infrastructure and training in post-Katrina New Orleans.

OBJECTIVE To describe a disaster recovery model focused on developing mental health services and capacity-building within a disparities-focused, community-academic participatory partnership framework. DESIGN Community-based participatory, partnered training and services delivery intervention in a post-disaster setting. SETTING Post-Katrina Greater New Orleans community. PARTICIPANTS More than 400 community providers from more than 70 health and social services agencies participated in the trainings. INTERVENTION Partnered development of a training and services delivery program involving physicians, therapists, community health workers, and other clinical and non-clinical personnel to improve access and quality of care for mental health services in a post-disaster setting. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Services delivery (outreach, education, screening, referral, direct treatment); training delivery; satisfaction and feedback related to training; partnered development of training products. RESULTS Clinical services in the form of outreach, education, screening, referral and treatment were provided in excess of 110,000 service units. More than 400 trainees participated in training, and provided feedback that led to evolution of training curricula and training products, to meet evolving community needs over time. Participant satisfaction with training generally scored very highly. CONCLUSION This paper describes a participatory, health-focused model of community recovery that began with addressing emerging, unmet mental health needs using a disparities-conscious partnership framework as one of the principle mechanisms for intervention. Population mental health needs were addressed by investment in infrastructure and services capacity among small and medium sized non-profit organizations working in disaster-impacted, low resource settings.