For most young people who enroll in college, it is their first time away from home and away from the support of their established peer groups and family members (Fromme, Corbin, & Kruse, 2008). This adjustment can be overwhelming, as is the added full college course schedule and expectations to perform (Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, & Phillips, 1990). On top of that, individuals at this age are in a stage of development when they are introduced to often difficult realities of adult responsibilities (Arnett, 2000).

Although schools’ primary function is to provide education, they serve as a natural access point for children across diverse subpopulations to receive health services (Richardson & Juszczak, 2008: O’Connell, Boat, & Warner, 2009). School-based interventions have the potential to educate youth about mental health issues and decrease stigma (Essler, Arthur, & Stickley, 2006). This section of the review focuses on guiding best practices for treatment of behavioral health in school-based settings organized across four domains: comprehensive behavioral health systems within schools; prevention; school policies; and personnel.

Mental health and substance use disorders are common, recurrent, and treatable, yet the most effective methods for addressing these issues are not always apparent or implemented. Our expert public health research team recently completed a comprehensive literature review on best practices for treating mental health and substance use disorders as part of a larger set of recommendations

This month, the Futurebound Summit brought together entrepreneurs, funders, policy makers, and other experts to build community and drive innovation with a shared goal of driving systemic and sustained change for child development.

Our team at OMNI engaged in multiple sessions during the week, from the kick-off events to leading a catalyst session focused on “Advancing the Evidence for Innovations in Child Development” alongside our long-term partner the Family Resource Center Association.

On this National Rural Health Day, we celebrate the important work taking place in rural and remote communities and share our continued commitment to improving public health.

Today, we launched a new page on our website, one focused on sharing our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) journey. In this fiscal year, the OMNI Institute is initiating efforts to formally and systematically integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout our organization, and throughout and thereafter, to institutionalize and sustain practices that reflect an understanding of DEI as intrinsic to every aspect of our work - who we are, what we do, and how and why we do it.

Funded by the Telligen Community Initiative, the Toolkit supports public health departments in generating a shared understanding of health equity within the organization, creating an organizational commitment to improving equity, and institutionalizing health equity practices.  This toolkit builds off the work of many existing resources, for which the OMNI Institute and partners are grateful.  We are humbled to contribute this toolkit to the field of equity and hope it may inspire others who will build onto it in the future. 

As recently reported in The Washington Post, the release of a comprehensive national dataset on opioid prescriptions provides a ‘virtual road map to the epidemic.’ Research shows that as opioid prescriptions increase, so do the number of opioid overdoses, and the data recently made available to the public dramatically illustrates this fact.

 We see the importance of such data every day in our work with states and communities invested in reducing and preventing the misuse of opioids and its devastating consequences for individuals, families, and communities.    

At OMNI, we have several Best Practice Teams that draw on and cultivate the talent of our staff from across our divisions. Our Data Visualization Best Practice Team primarily supports company-wide excellence and innovation in ‘data viz’. For OMNI, good data viz means more than just beautiful graphics, it means clear and easily understood data for a range of audiences and makes data accessible and useable for our clients and their stakeholders. 

For the past three and a half years, our team worked closely with the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providerson a pilot study designed to test and refine best practices for conducting outcomes data collection, analysis, and reporting for addiction treatment. We worked with eight treatment facilities to collect data on long-term outcomes for patients after leaving treatment and measured key indicators such as substance use, mental health, and social support. The study resulted in the publication of the NAATP Addiction Treatment Outcomes Measurement Toolkit: The Addiction Treatment Provider Guide to Standardized Outcomes, published in a special issue of the NAATP newsletter, Addiction Leader.  

In 2019, we are honored to announce Hannah Wolfson as the recipient of the OMNI Research Award for her findings of barriers to providing Gender Affirming Care for transgender and non-binary patients at Colorado’s Salud integrated health clinics, which primarily serve low-income and Latinx clients along the Front Range and in Eastern Colorado. 

This week is National Prevention Week, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) annual time to promote public awareness and action around mental health and substance use disorders.

Naomi Randell first came to OMNI through the Public Interest Fellowship Program (PIFP) at Colorado College.

Since our founding in 1976, the OMNI Institute has invested in shared learning—the act of working together to achieve a common objective.

Last night our team received the James W. West, M.D. Quality Improvement Award for our research, analysis, and reporting regarding the tracking and measurement of addiction treatment outcomes obtained during the three-year Outcomes Pilot Program with NAATP as well as the production of The NAATP Outcomes Evaluation Toolkit.

This Sunday marks the start of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers’ Annual Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C.

Mayra Coronado Garcia joined OMNI as a researcher in March 2019, with a focus on data analysis and management, and report development.

Jason Wheeler recently joined the team at OMNI as a Researcher in March of 2019, but he’s been interested in research his whole life.

Equity. It seems like this word is everywhere these days, but what does it really mean, and how do you effectively approach work with an equity lens?

We're halfway through National Public Health Week which got us thinking about all of the amazing work being done to advance health, both at the OMNI Institute and by our partners and colleagues nationwide.