TOPIC 55B: DEVELOPMENT OF TOOLS TO ENHANCE MENTAL HEALTH INTERVENTIONS AND SERVIC

The high level of unmet mental health needs of older adults in the United States, coupled with the anticipated huge growth in the number of older adults over the next decades, underscore the importance of developing and using effective approaches to improve access to care, quality of care, and patient outcomes. Evidence-based practices in mental health are an integral part of the plan to achieve this goal. This SBIR contract will work with experts to improve the quality of evidence-based mental health practices through the development of extensive curriculum, educational materials, and methodologies to educate young investigators and clinicians, graduate fellows, and undergraduate students with the hope of bringing them into the pipeline, creating a researcher base for future research, and training the end users to integrate it into their practice. Besides reviewing the existing strong evidence base, this program will also look into the evidence gap, identifying areas where more research is needed. The end product will be a Web based platform hosting expert panel discussions, interactive educational modules, and a host of peer reviewed resources. This initiative will create a credible, content rich, current, and innovative learning system that will be constantly updated and will become as the most authoritative online resource for promoting research and implementation of evidence based practices to improve the quality of care and patient outcomes for the elderly. The infrastructure developed for this SBIR phase II will focus on geriatrics but will be easily adaptable to any other discipline.