Community Partners in Care is a Research Project Funded by the National Institutes of Health

CPIC is a community initiative and research study funded by the NIH. CPIC was developed and is being run by community and academic partners in Los Angeles underserved communities of color. CPIC compares two ways of supporting diverse health and social programs in under-resourced communities to improve their services to depressed clients. One approach is time-limited expert technical assistance coupled with culturally-competent community outreach to individual programs, on how to use quality improvement toolkits for depression that have already been proven to be effective or helpful in primary care settings, but adapted for this study for use in diverse community-based programs in underserved communities. The other approach brings different types of agencies and members in a community together in a 4 to 6-month planning process, to fit the same depression quality improvement programs to the needs and strengths of the community and to develop a network of programs serving the community to support clients with depression together. The study is designed to determine the added value of community engagement and planning over and above what might be offered through a community-oriented, disease management company. Both intervention models are based on the same quality improvement toolkits that support team leadership, care management, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, medication management, and patient education and activation. Investigators hypothesized that the community engagement approach would increase agency and clinician participation in evidence-based trainings and improve client mental health-related quality of life. In addition, during the design phase, community participants prioritized adding as outcomes indicators of social determinants of mental health, including physical functioning, risk factors for homelessness and employment. Investigators hypothesized by activating community agencies that can address health and social services needs to engage depressed clients, these outcomes would also be improved more in the collaboration condition. Investigators also hypothesized that the collaboration approach would increase use of services.