[Federal Register Volume 68, Number 79 (Thursday, April 24, 2003)]
[Notices]
[Pages 20164-20165]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 03-10114]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration


Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB 
Review; Comment Request

    Periodically, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services 
Administration (SAMHSA) will publish a summary of information 
collection requests under OMB review, in compliance with the Paperwork 
Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35). To request a copy of these 
documents, call the SAMHSA Reports Clearance Officer on (301) 443-7978.
    SAMHSA/HRSA Collaboration to Link Health Care for the Homeless 
Programs and Community Mental Health Agencies--(New)--The Substance 
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for 
Mental Health Services (CMHS); the Health Resources and Services 
Administration (HRSA), Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC); and the 
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) 
plan to conduct a longitudinal, multi-site evaluation assessing their 
initiative to foster collaborations between Health Care for the 
Homeless programs (HCH) and community mental health agencies (CMHAs). 
In 12 designated communities, an HCH site and a CMHA site will 
collaborate to increase the availability of mental health and primary 
care services for persons with serious mental illness and co-occurring 
substance use disorders who are homeless. The evaluation of these 
collaborative efforts will advance knowledge on elements of the 
implementation process associated with establishment of a successful 
collaboration, such as partnering mechanisms, success of referral 
links, intensity of services, the effects of collaboration on client 
outcomes, and plans for sustain ability.
    Data collection will be conducted over a 30-month period. In each 
community, both a process and an outcome evaluation will be conducted 
to address the following questions: How is the project being 
implemented? What are the identified collaboration mechanisms? What are 
the service/agency level outcomes? What are the system-level outcomes? 
What are the client-level outcomes? To what extent do the various 
collaboration strategies predict outcomes?
    To reduce burden and increase uniformity across the study sites, a 
common case study protocol will be

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used to guide the evaluation. Information for the service/agency and 
system level evaluations will be collected by staff from the central 
Evaluation Center (EC) during annual site visits and through monthly 
activity logs. Common site visit protocols will dictate what data 
collection methods will be used. Site visitors will rely on focus 
groups and interviews to obtain information from project directors, 
local evaluators, project staff, and clients. Activity logs monitoring 
each community's efforts to implement collaboration strategies, will be 
completed by program administrators and submitted to the EC monthly. 
Key outcomes to be examined at the service/agency level through these 
data collection methods include increased availability of mental 
health, substance abuse, specialty care, housing and services; 
increased access to primary care, mental health, and substance abuse 
services; more comprehensive assessment of and services for individual 
needs; increased integrated delivery of services; and increased 
engagement and retention in services. System-level outcomes to be 
examined include increased cross-agency activity; increased mental 
health capacity at Hch sites; less redundancy in data collection; and 
enhanced screening for multi-dimensional issues.
    The estimated response burden for this project is as follows:

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                                                                                      Burden/
                   Instrument                        Number of      Responses/       response      Total burden
                                                    respondents     respondent        (hrs.)           hours
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General Session Interviews......................              84               3             1.5             378
Administrative Interviews.......................              24               3             1.5              72
Evaluator Interviews............................              12               3             1.0              36
Line Staff Interviews...........................              48               3             2.0             288
Consumer Focus Groups...........................             252               1             1.0             252
Other Key Informants............................              48               3             1.0             144
Monthly Activity Logs...........................              12              28             0.5             168
Total...........................................             564  ..............  ..............           1,842
3-yr. Annual Average............................             480  ..............  ..............             614
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    A total of approximately 6,500 program participants are expected to 
be recruited from the 12 sites. Each site will collect GPRA data on 
these participants using the CMHS GPRA Core Client Outcome measures 
approved by the Office of Management and Budget under control number 
0930-0208, which cover such domains as drug and alcohol use, family and 
living conditions, education, employment, and income, crime and 
criminal justice status, and mental and physical health problems and 
treatment. To obtain information on client-level outcomes the central 
Evaluation Center will work with each site to develop methods for 
obtaining relevant material from the GPRA data. The Evaluation Center 
will provide training and technical assistance to all sites on data 
submission procedures.
    Written comments and recommendations concerning the proposed 
information collection should be sent within 30 days of this notice to: 
Allison Herron Eydt, Human Resources and Housing Branch, Office of 
Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, Room 10235, 
Washington, DC 20503.

    Dated: April 17, 2003.
Richard Kopanda,
Executive Officer, SAMHSA.
[FR Doc. 03-10114 Filed 4-23-03; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4162-20-P