Grant Partners

Burlington Public Schools will pilot Collaborative Care in Schools, a team-based mental health care approach created to complement existing school services. The pilot will enhance behavioral health support for students and families without additional costs to the school districts. A specialized mental health care team will be deployed to Burlington Public Schools, consisting of a behavioral health care manager, a licensed clinician with a master's level in behavioral health, and a nurse practitioner. Additionally, a consulting psychiatrist will be available once a week to meet with the mental health care team. This model aims to cater to both students and faculty members of Burlington Public Schools and work toward reducing barriers to mental health services and providing personalized care that meets each student's unique needs. 

William James College’s Center for Workforce Development (CWD) will pilot a Behavioral Health Service Corps for Men of Color (BHSC-MOC) to address the urgent need for frontline behavioral health workers from under resourced communities. This pipeline program aims to diversify the behavioral health field as well as serve as a catalyst for building a sustainable workforce that can address mental health and substance use disparities among historically underserved communities in Massachusetts. 

Community Servings will pilot a “step-down program” for clients who have received medically tailored meals but have become well enough to transition away from home-delivery service.  The program will provide a pathway to address food and nutrition insecurity.  The step-down program will provide medically tailored food boxes, a cookbook with simple recipes, cooking demonstration videos, nutrition education, and support from a registered dietitian nutritionist.

First Teacher Boston will provide perinatal health education to Black and brown families in Dorchester and Roxbury with a series of small-group workshops and a prenatal/postpartum resource toolkit. 

Stavros' mission is to help persons with disabilities and Deaf people develop the tools and skills they need to take charge of their own lives. They accomplish this through programs and services designed to meet the needs of persons of any age or disability as they work to achieve the life goals that are important to them. Stavros provides services to persons that identify as having a disability and who live in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties of western Massachusetts. Stavros will work with the BCBSMA Foundation and its technical assistance partners to support community members in addressing mild mental health distress and practical problems of daily living. Stavros will implement the PM+ model to support people with disabilities who live in western Massachusetts and have difficulty getting services due to limited access to the internet and transportation.

Funding for two Instant Language Assistant (ILA) devices as well as software to allow more electronic communications in multiple languages to meet the surge of non-English speaking clients. These devices will provide real-time translation support to serve and provide resources to multilingual clients.

Funding requested to elevate the organization’s digital and social media presence to effectively communicate with the community and break the stigma surrounding mental health conversations for families raising youth with mental health needs by ensuring they have access to care, community, and resources.

Funding to develop program materials to help pilot the Peer-Based Mental Wellness Coaching Program, a transformative approach to mental wellness that leverages lived experience, cultural wisdom, and community support. 

MIRA Coalition is the only statewide advocacy organization exclusively devoted to the well-being of immigrants and refugees. MIRA partners with other health care advocates to ensure that the needs of immigrants and refugees are supported and appropriately communicated through various channels. MIRA plays a critical education, outreach, and advocacy role at a time when access to health care for immigrants continues to be challenging.

Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee’s (CEOC) mission is to empower people and mobilize resources to fight the impact and causes of poverty through education and organizing. CEOC envisions an inclusive and diverse Cambridge without poverty, where everyone has affordable housing, quality health care, education, food security, and economic stability. CEOC will provide the Journey to the Hope program (the organization’s PM+ intervention program); increase staff members' knowledge, comfort, and confidence in discussing mental health and delivering Journey to Hope to community members.

Tufts University’s Center for Black Maternal Health & Reproductive Justice will create a digital toolkit to assist doulas with the MassHealth enrollment process and improve access to doula services for Black and Brown pregnant people. 

Funding requested to upgrade the organization’s technology infrastructure that will enable the pantry to serve more constituents and improve members access to healthy foods. 

The Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery (MOAR) educates the public about the value of addiction recovery. The organization's central concerns are to reduce: the social stigma of addiction; the shortage of timely treatment to promote recovery and reduce overdose risk; the lack of long-term treatment; and the disproportionate effects of addiction on populations such as veterans, pregnant women, non-English speakers, communities of color, and recently incarcerated people. MOAR is led by people in recovery and engages people with lived experience to identify recovery barriers and solutions through individual peer work, group work, and coalition-building efforts. Bay State Community Services, Inc. serves as MOAR’s fiscal sponsor for this grant.

The Fishing Partnership (TFP) will increase behavioral health equity in Massachusetts fishing communities by promoting the availability and accessibility of behavioral health support with a focus on cultural competency and language accessibility. This funding will allow TFP to integrate behavioral health access within its existing community health worker program by training TFP Navigators in behavioral health with Riverside Trauma Center (RTC). This will enhance the Navigators’ ability to respond to traumatic incidents in the fishing industry alongside the RTC team of clinicians.

Luminosity Behavioral Health Services will develop an improved responsive behavioral health model in communities of color throughout southeastern Massachusetts.  As the co-convenor and fiscal agent for the South East Multicultural Providers Association (SEMPA), Luminosity and its collaborative partners are aiming to end the “scavenger hunt” for supportive, culturally sensitive therapeutic interventions that exist in the region.  SEMPA members will implement cross-agency agreements to address the availability of services, youth advocacy and referrals.  The goal is to train and certify 60 staff members in applying trauma-specific interventions, create a standardized referral process and policies to reduce long waitlists across the participating organizations, and increase the pool of multicultural health professionals and youth mentors serving the needs of Brockton families.