UC Davis Health’s Post

🚀UC Davis Health Launches Digital Program to Support Reentry After Incarceration 🚀 People reentering communities after incarceration face immense challenges such as homelessness, substance use disorders, and mental health issues. To address these, UC Davis Health's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Digital CoLab have launched the Digital SAFE-T Program, a digital support initiative for individuals with mental health and substance use disorders post-incarceration. The program provides free smartphones, automated SMS check-ins, and a web-based community resource guide, ensuring that recently released individuals can access vital services and support. The pilot SAFE-T Program showed promising results with significantly lower re-arrest and emergency room visit rates. Funded by a $1.5 million congressional grant, this initiative underscores the importance of federal support in tackling health equity. “We are proud to help incarcerated and released individuals access critical resources and care through technology,” said Ashish Atreja, CIO and Chief Digital Health Officer of UC Davis Health. This innovative program exemplifies how technology can transform healthcare delivery and support vulnerable populations. Learn more about how UC Davis Health is advancing health equity and supporting communities: #DigitalHealth #HealthEquity #Telehealth #UC DavisHealth #IncarcerationReentry #CommunitySupport

One goal of our mental health assessments for correctional facilities is to help prisoners successfully integrate into society after serving their time. Want to learn more? https://lnkd.in/gAYkb-wG #correctionalfacilities #mentalhealthcare #telepsychiatry

Proper mental health assessments for inmates are often overlooked due to limited resources and a lack of qualified providers. Check out our blog to learn how telepsychiatry can help by providing quicker and more accessible psychiatric assessments. https://lnkd.in/gAYkb-wG #correctionalfacilities #telepsychiatry

Preventing Youth Incarceration: A Translational Approach I am honored to have been selected to present in this year's Howard University Research Symposium. My presentation is a preliminary report of collaborative work that the Education Rights Center is doing in collaboration with the Workforce Development Class, HU I-LEAD, HU School of Social Work, and HU School of Psychology. Thank you to Thomas Armooh, Crystal Bush, Malachi Clemons, Ayomide Okeshola, Darwin Perry, and Layla Washington for their participation in student interviews. Juvenile crime has recently reached crisis levels.  Youth incarceration is a policy approach being used to address the problem. The aim of this project is to identify alternative policy approaches by analyzing qualitative community data of individuals most affected by the problem -- the young people in the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of youth involved in the criminal justice system. The research team was an academic pipeline, incorporating participants ranging from high school (senior project inspired the work), through interdisciplinary undergraduate ILEAD students, to graduate students and faculty in three disciplines (law, social work, and psychology). In translating research into social benefit, the project leverages the following five research objectives -- two substantive and three methodological: 1. Formulate provisional youth incarceration prevention recommendations; 2. Lift the voices of students in communities most affected by juvenile crime and incarceration, concerning the causes and solutions to the problem; 3. Test methodologies for collecting community data from juvenile populations; 4. Consider methodologies for incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to make data analysis more efficient; and 5. Test methodologies for asynchronous interdisciplinary collaboration across a pipeline of participants.

One goal of our mental health assessments for correctional facilities is to help prisoners successfully integrate into society after serving their time. https://lnkd.in/gAYkb-wG #correctionalfacilities #mentalhealthcare #telepsychiatry

TUC College of Pharmacy Associate Professor Kelan Thomas, PharmD, MS, BCPP talks about the world of drug policy and decriminalization. “In general decriminalization has been a policy that's been endorsed by the city of Oakland, Santa Cruz, San Francisco. So far, it's been more city-by-city decriminalization, which has more direct control of enforcement around drug policy in their own cities. I think that that's a good start for reducing the public harms from substance use, which has led to incredibly high rates of incarceration. For example, in my own county of Alameda County, which that includes Oakland, about 40% of people incarcerated in both jail and federal prisons have a mental health disorder. Substance use often can be comorbid, and I think decriminalization is an important effort. Other countries have engaged in this policy at a nation level and it always leads to better public health outcomes.” Check the link below to learn more! #pharmacy #pharmacist #faculty #touro #wearetouro #oakland #sfbayarea #alameda #sanfrancisco #SantaCruz

Mental health screenings are essential for identifying and addressing the mental health of inmates. On-demand telepsychiatry services can provide timely and reliable screenings, ensuring quick and efficient access to mental health care. Check out our new blog for more information. https://lnkd.in/gAYkb-wG #correctionalfacilities #telepsychiatry

A new ProPublica investigation reveals that a Mississippi hospital routinely sends patients awaiting inpatient psychiatric treatment to jail until a treatment bed can be found, because it has no psych beds of its own. One person committed suicide while imprisoned; another died of multiple organ failure One man was jailed for 2 months. Many said they were not always given their medicine. Not one of these people committed a crime, yet they were treated like criminals by people who are supposed to help them. There is a dangerous shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds for people who need urgent treatment, caused in large part by an outdated, discriminatory U.S. law known as the “IMD exclusion,” which prohibits Medicaid payment to any facility with more than 16 inpatient psychiatric beds. People with brain diseases are not criminals, and jails are not a substitute for care. We support the Michelle Go Act, which would more than double the number of psychiatric inpatient beds a treatment facility can have to be eligible for Medicaid coverage. Read the story here: https://bit.ly/4dY58Ps. Read about the Michelle Go Act here: https://bit.ly/44THWO4