Building effective EB services at New Haven Adult Education

Many Americans fail to receive their high school diploma. Individuals enrolled in Adult Education classes have exited the K-12 education system without a high school diploma. This reduces their access to economic resources, heightens their risk for poverty and poor health, limits their ability to meet occupational and social expectations of adult life, and exacerbates their stress. Behavioral health (i.e., depression, anxiety, anger, substance use) is implicated in K-12 school failure, as it negatively impacts students’ acquisition of academic skills and their achievement of educational and vocational goals. Students enrolled in Adult Education Centers (AECs) are often ignored in most analyses that explore how behavioral health issues impact students’ general functioning and academic outcomes, even though behavioral health challenges in AECs may be greater than that in the general population. AECs are ill equipped to address students’ behavioral health challenges. Few evidence-based, behavioral health interventions are currently deployed in AECs that target the behavioral health challenges AEC students may experience. Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), often informed by Motivational Interviewing (MI), positively impacts health outcomes. Positive outcomes are associated with the successful screening and referral to behavioral health services. In turn, these behavioral health improvements may also help to facilitate positive academic results for impacted AEC students. Implementation Facilitation is a promising strategy for ensuring the successful implementation of SBIRT in AECs. Guided by the integrated-Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) framework, we propose an R34 project to: 1) conduct an iterative, mixed methods formative evaluation approach to identify barriers and facilitators of SBIRT implementation in AECs and tailor an Implementation Facilitation strategy to support the delivery of SBIRT to AEC students by SRSs; and 2) examine the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effectiveness of Implementation Facilitation to promote the use of SBIRT by SRSs with AEC students.