BHECN-ARPA News

News regarding the BHECN-ARPA Awards Project -- April 1, 2024

This ARPA awardee profile will feature HopeSpoke in Lincoln. Below, HopeSpoke’s Development Director, Becki Roberts, pictured right, tells us more about the project, which received funding in the Behavioral Health Training Opportunities category.

Tell us about your project and what made you want to pursue it?

Through BHECN, HopeSpoke acquired ARPA funding to host six trainings over three years for behavioral health providers. The goal is to provide low-cost training opportunities to clinicians and practitioners across the state. Specific topics, including trauma-informed care, are vital to the treatment of the children and families we serve at HopeSpoke, and we are aware that not everyone has affordable access to evidence-based information. This grant allows us to partner with providers statewide to increase participation, creating a more robust and informed system of care across the state.

The first training developed through this grant occurred last September at UNL's Innovation Campus and featured Dr Sam Himelstein on "Mindfulness, Trauma, and Building Authentic Relationships With Young People." The next training opportunity is the annual Nebraska Adolescent Perpetration Network (NAPN) annual conference, which will be held May 15-16 in Lincoln. The conference will featuring Kevin Creeden, MA, LHMC, who has more than 35 years of clinical experience treating children, adolescents, and their families. For information on this and future conferences, contact info@hopespoke.org.

What do you find most exciting about the project?

What has been most exciting is the number of county, state, and agency providers who have joined us in a partnership with this mission to create a system of care for children and families.

What do you see as the biggest barrier to success for the project?

Time. The ability for providers to be able to be away from their work to attend the trainings is limited. Future trainings may include a mix of in-person and virtual opportunities to be more accessible to providers statewide.

What learnings have you gleaned from the project so far?

With the shortages of providers in the state, agencies are unable to free up time for therapists and other key staff to attend trainings, but they are eager for the information, and we are proud to be a small part of the solution. 

Great Plains Telehealth Resource & Assistance Center (gpTRAC) will host its annual Regional Premier Telehealth Conference, titled "Telehealth Everywhere" on May 21-22 in Bloomington, MN.

This would be a perfect opportunity for ARPA awardees who have budgeted travel to conferences. Register here and view the agenda online.

Below is information about some recently announced federal funding opportunities that may be of interest to ARPA Awardees. Click the links to learn more.

• $10 million for Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT). This program implements the SBIRT public health model for children, adolescents, and/or adults in primary care and community health settings – such as health centers, hospital systems, health maintenance organizations, preferred-provider organizations health plans, Federally Qualified Health Centers, behavioral health centers, pediatric health care providers and children’s hospitals – and schools with a focus on screening for underage drinking, opioid use, and other substance use.
• $5 million for Community Programs for Outreach and Intervention with Youth and Young Adults at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis. This program provides trauma-informed interventions to youth and young adults, up to 25 years of age, who are at clinically high risk for psychosis.
• $6.2 million for First Responders – Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. This program provides resources to support first responders and others with training, administering, and distributing naloxone and other Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved opioid overdose reversal medications or devices with a focus on populations disproportionately impacted by overdose.