Special Populations

The Odyssey Project: Warriors Come Home uses photography as a tool of community engagement to help veterans explore the journey home from war in a safe space. The goal of the exercises is to help participants consolidate their memories and communicate a narrative of their experiences more comfortably. Using a mixed-methods approach, this project will constitute the first formal evaluation of the Odyssey Project's impact on veterans' social connections, well-being and quality of life, as well as how veterans describe the experience of participating in the Odyssey Project in the context of reintegration into civilian life.

This study addresses gaps in the current scholarly understanding of dental care and oral health disparities among drug treatment court clients by examining dental care utilization, access to care and self-reported oral health among people in the local drug treatment courts in the 8th Judicial District in Western New York. We will conduct two surveys: (1) a survey of drug treatment court participants’ dental needs and barriers to dental care, and (2) a brief dental needs assessment of the 8th Judicial District drug court coordinators and judges. The results will inform a larger, externally funded grant to improve access to dental care and oral health for justice-involved people in Western New York.  

This project enhances case management capacity to accelerate linkage to MAT services and trauma informed services, particularly for those with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental illness which are often common in low-income minority communities. We employ the MISSION-CJ (Maintaining Independence and Sobriety through Systems Integration, Outreach, and Networking - Criminal Justice) recovery support model. 

Hope of Erie County will use a Critical Time Intervention (CTI) approach to coordinate care and services for justice involved individuals who are identified as high risk with regard to physical and behavioral health care needs (i.e., individuals with co-occurring and/or multiple morbidities). Hope of Erie County will work with clients to identify relevant focus areas, provide linkages to formal and informal support systems, and gradually taper back case management as linkages become stable and enduring. We expect this process will generate improved health outcomes, better integrated health care and reduced institutionalization including incarceration and hospitalization.

Buffalo, NY, the second largest city in New York State (population 276,807), located in Erie County (population 950,683) is one of the poorest cities in the US (31% in poverty). One of the most pressing problems in metropolitan Buffalo is adverse health outcomes in urban neighborhoods, a condition shared with many American metropolitan areas. The life expectancy of people who reside in under-resourced neighborhoods live 10 to 12 years shorter and are 300% more likely to have chronic, often preventable, diseases compared to those who live in well-resourced neighborhoods. In response to this crisis, in 2014, a group of visionary community leaders created a Task Force, which includes leaders and stakeholders from multiple sectors of the Buffalo community, including community leaders, community non-profits, health care providers, payers, University at Buffalo (UB) faculty, representatives from the Erie County Department of Health and more. The Task Force has met monthly since 2015. Leaders of organizations that represent a broad range of community stakeholders continue to meet monthly as part of the Task Force. This community-university-government partnership has enormous reach and influence throughout the community, positioning us to disseminate research findings and work with policy makers and community stakeholders to promote sustainable improvements in public health and health outcomes. The mission of our NIMHD Center of Excellence in Investigator Development and Community Engagement is to train and develop the next generation of investigators to perform innovative research in partnership with our community and to the benefit of the community. The Center of Excellence will include faculty from all 12 UB schools, creating a transdisciplinary framework that cuts across scientific and organizational silos to integrate disciplines to address the full range of public health issues and to mentor early-career investigators in research in improving health outcomes. Our Center of Excellence will inspire, train, and mentor a new generation of scientists from multiple disciplines to perform innovative research and advance their careers (Aim 1). We will nurture our enduring community-university partnerships to perform transdisciplinary research to develop and test innovative solutions to improve health outcomes in Buffalo and the region (Aim 2). Finally, we will advance collaborations with community partners to translate our research into sustainable, community changes toward improving health in Buffalo communities (Aim 3). Our enduring community-university-government partnership is a strong foundation for an NIMHD Center of Excellence, an exceptional advance in our environment to train and mentor a new generation of researchers to perform research that will create sustained improvements in health outcomes in communities in Buffalo and the nation. 

Operation: SAFETY is a longitudinal research study which will examine the health and well-being of U.S. Army Reserve/National Guard soldiers and their partners. The purpose of Phase 1 was to explore how reserve soldiers and their partners impact each others’ physical and mental well-being. The knowledge gained from the study can be used to help design interventions that improve the physical and mental well-being of military reserve soldiers and their families. Phase 2 will continue the work of Phase 1, but we will also examine experiences with non-deployment and separation from the military. 

BestSelf Behavioral Health will expand its treatment services in Erie County's two jails and provide community-based treatment services in a newly established reentry support center in downtown Buffalo called the Service Link Stop (SLS). The goal is to increase the number of participants receiving medication assisted treatment (MAT) as well as cognitive behavioral intervention-based SUD and reentry services. This initiative serves individuals who are released from jails as they transition back to the community, and pre-trial clients and probation clients from Erie County Probation who may have been briefly detained in regional lock-ups and then were released by the courts directly to probation.

This project centers around the planning and implementation of the enhancement and expansion of cross-system collaboration in Erie County to improve public safety responses and outcomes for individuals with mental health disorders or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who come into contact with the justice system.

This project supports the expansion of capacity and access to an evidence-based care coordination model (MISSION-CJ with rapid MAT transport) in the Opioid Intervention Court. We also will expand the capacity of the court over five years.