TEAM UP Publications

Integrated mental health care in pediatric primary care at Federally Qualified Health Centers linked to improvements in school functioning, study finds.

This study examines the association of a comprehensive mental health integration model with health care utilization, psychotropic medication use, and mental health follow-up care among Medicaid-enrolled children at federally qualified health centers (FQHCs).

The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) is a national, non-profit organization that works to achieve a racially, economically, and socially just society in which all children and families can thrive. CSSP recently completed an Early Learning Report on the TEAM UP Model and how it has transformed & expanded access to mental health care in urban pediatrics. 

This study demonstrates that behavioral health integration at Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) was associated with improved screening and "warm hand-offs" for same-day behavioral care, expansion of ADHD care, and declines in polypharmacy. 

This study describes the barriers and facilitators to integrating behavioral health services and pediatric primary care in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) during the early stages of implementation.

The present study demonstrates that Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a useful quality improvement (QI) tool to identify barriers of implementing pediatric BH integration and systematically planning improvement efforts. Behavioral health clinicians, including pediatric psychologists, primary care providers, and other members of the primary care team can leverage these findings to inform behavioral health (BH) integration model implementation in the pediatric primary care setting.

BRANCH (Building Resilience And Nurturing CHildren) is a brief trauma-informed, extended screening and assessment intervention developed for integrated behavioral health clinicians who practice in primary care pediatric settings. This report provides a summary of BRANCH’s development and implementation during the period of September 2017-May 2020.

To evaluate the impact of TEAM UP—an initiative that fully integrates behavioral health services into pediatric primary care in three Boston‐area Community Health Centers (CHCs)—on health care utilization and costs.

Pediatric behavioral health integration (BHI) represents a promising approach to address unmet child mental health need but little research exists to guide BHI implementation. Through in-depth interviews with 38 professionals involved in a comprehensive pediatric BHI initiative at 3 community health centers, we explored perceptions of the impact of BHI on clinical practice, and facilitators and barriers to BHI implementation.