Service Delivery System

Home | COSIG

Headlines continued

In June 2000, Alaska began a multi-year planning effort to improve the integration of mental health and substance abuse treatment for individuals with co-occurring disorders. These efforts grew out of a belief that individuals with co-occurring disorders are often inadequately served in mental health and substance abuse treatment settings and are consequently a “population with poorer outcomes and higher costs in multiple clinical domains” (Consensus Document, 2002). The final project report on these early efforts contains specific recommendations for implementing a range of state level system change strategies to provide more welcoming, accessible, integrated, continuous, and comprehensive services to Alaskans with co-occurring disorders. Following the completion of the report, the project’s implementation team developed a consensus document articulating a statewide action plan based on the report’s recommendations. Specifically, DHSS (including DMHDD and DADA), AMHB, ABADA, and the Mental Health Trust Authority agreed to adopt the Comprehensive, Continuous, Integrated System of Care (CCISC) model for creating statewide systems change. CCISC is a nationally recognized best practice approach for accomplishing the types of systems and clinical transformation envisioned by the planning group.

In September, 2003 Alaska was one of seven states awarded a Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration-funded Co-Occurring State Incentive Grant (COSIG) for infrastructure and service delivery enhancement in the treatment of persons with co-occurring disorders. Alaska’s successful application built on the state’s previous planning efforts as well as the creation of the new integrated Division of Behavioral Health (DBH) under the State’s Department of Health and Human Services. Alaska’s COSIG grant will support and strengthen ongoing CCISC activities to integrate systems and services for individuals with co-occurring disorders. The project officially began in January 2004. This collective effort has been named the “Behavioral Health Integration Project.”