Monitoring Prevention Mental Health Programs

Supporting California Counties to Meet Statewide Reporting Requirements

Amy L. Shearer, Patricia A. Ebener, M. Audrey Burnam

ToolPublished Sep 28, 2018

In an effort to improve mental health outcomes for individuals, families, and communities, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH) offers prevention and early intervention programs to residents. To comply with regulations established by California's Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, LACDMH must report on changes in program participants' risk and protective factors that occur as a result of program engagement. LACDMH asked the RAND Corporation for assistance in developing tools to help generate such measures and reports.

In this document, RAND researchers describe the process they used and the products they created to assist LACDMH. The process included developing a conceptual framework to guide the selection of appropriate measures of program outcomes and their associated risk and protective factors; assessing and selecting existing measures that meet certain criteria; designing and formatting questionnaires for data collection for three target populations; and creating the Data Entry, Scoring, and Report Tool. The researchers also review the strengths and limitations of their approach and suggest next steps.

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Shearer, Amy L., Patricia A. Ebener, and M. Audrey Burnam, Monitoring Prevention Mental Health Programs: Supporting California Counties to Meet Statewide Reporting Requirements. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018. https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TL307.html.
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This work was sponsored by the California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA) and conducted by RAND Health.

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