The University of Missouri-Kansas City won another large grant to help address the U.S. opioid crisis nationally.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded a $2.5 million grant to the UMKC School of Nursing and Health Studies Collaborative to Advance Health Services. UMKC will bring together leaders in the field of substance use prevention, partnering with National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, Inc., National Prevention Network and the Applied Prevention Science International.

As part of the grant, the UMKC Collaborative will support the Prevention Technology Transfer Centers as the Network Coordinating Office. This innovative partnership will be the first of its kind for the field of substance-use prevention. The team will represent a unique and significant collaboration between the Prevention Network Coordinating Office and the Addiction Technology Transfer Center for which the Collaborative has been a partner with for 25 years.

“The highly experienced team of experts in implementation science in the field of substance- use prevention will make a substantial impact on providers and services for our most vulnerable communities and populations locally, regionally and nationally,” said Ann Cary, dean of the UMKC School of Nursing and Health Studies.

The partnership will serve SAMHSA, 12 technology transfer centers across all 50 states and U.S. territories (10 regional and two national centers that are population specific), and the substance use prevention field as a whole. The Network Coordinating Office team anticipates serving 1,730 participants and over the five-year period of the grant will serve 8,650. The Network Coordinating Office will address the following goals:

• Develop and enhance strategic alliances among culturally diverse practitioners, researchers, policy makersandcommunity leaders to stretch scarce resources
• Increase and optimize opportunities for the Prevention Technology Transfer Centers to build the prevention workforce;
• Establish a collaborative, coordinated network approach based on implementation science strategies, to improve the quality of substance use prevention efforts.

“Building this network from on-the-ground, state-level know how and combining it with evidence-based prevention practices will maximize the Network Coordinating Offices’ ability to affect real-world practice change,” said Holly Hagle, principal investigator for the grant and an assistant research professor in the UMKC Collaborative. “We’re confident this combination will accelerate the utilization of prevention science in the field.”

The UMKC Collaborative is an applied research group that is working to advance health and wellness by bringing research to practice, supporting organizations through change processes and providing high -quality training and technical assistance to the healthcare workforce. Included the team for this UMKC Collaborative grant was co-lead investigator Laurie Krom, a program director at the UMKC School of Nursing and Health Studies. Rounding out the rest of the UMKC Collaborative are 19 staff members as well as a number of specialists and consultants making up the project teams across a portfolio of more than 12 active grants and contracts.