END OF FUNDING
Thank you for your interest in the Northwest Rural Opioid Technical Assistance Collaborative (NW ROTAC). We are honored and privileged to have served rural communities throughout Region 10 including Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington in “doing what works” since 2022, guided by the expertise and support of our many community partners and rural behavioral health providers like you. SAMHSA has restructured its funding for this work and regional funding will not be renewed. Thus, after two incredible years, our training and technical assistance (TTA) activities will be coming to a close at the end of the current grant cycle on September 29, 2024. Pending approval, we will operate with limited capacity through December 2024. Our aim is to ensure a thoughtful and intentional transition, and to provide sustainable resources that will endure beyond NW ROTAC. Website updates, including explanations of how to access resources, will be ongoing through December 2024.
Keep an eye out for our September webinar, where closing activities will be explained in detail.
Read on to learn about our sustainable resources and program accomplishments.
OUR RESOURCES
Our website will remain accessible for the foreseeable future, although information will not be updated beyond December 2024 unless otherwise noted. We’d like to highlight the following resources:
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Our on-demand webinars will remain available for viewing at no-cost and continue to bear NAADAC continuing education credit through January 2026.
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Our National, Regional, State, and Tribal resources pages will continue to serve as resource repositories.
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Our Radio Promotion Toolkit remains available to guide viewers on how to effectively engage with radio stations and develop content. This includes best practices for connecting with radio stations, a breakdown of options for radio outreach, sample interview guides, public service announcement (PSA) scripts, and phone and email templates for connecting with radio partners.
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County-level community resource guides outlining behavioral health resources and services will be available for download and local adaptation starting Summer 2024!
OUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS
We’d like to highlight major contributions of NW ROTAC to build local capacity, provide education about evidence-based practices, and bolster the rural behavioral health workforce.
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Webinar Series
NW ROTAC produced 13 webinars on opioid-related topics spanning the behavioral health continuum, 10 of which are currently available on-demand on our website. We have archived an additional 13 webinars from the Center for Rural Opioid Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery (CROP+TR), a predecessor organization to NW ROTAC. As of February 2024, NW ROTAC is an NAADAC-approved education provider and participants can receive one hour of continuing education credit per webinar through January 2026.
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Mental Health First Aid
We provided training to certify community members in Mental Health First Aid across Region 10. Over the course of the project, we trained a total of 102 participants to identify common symptoms of mental health and substance use challenges, how to interact with a person in crisis, and how to connect that person with help. For future trainings, use this link to find a local provider.
02
Trainings
In addition to webinars, we hosted trainings to support rural providers interested in particular programs or approaches. These events included:
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Youth engagement approaches including youth participatory action research
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Parenting programs including Strengthening Families Program 10-14 with adaptation for a virtual format and substance adaptation
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Contingency management training
04
Community Conversations Facilitation Training
We provided 5 trainings for facilitators to deliver SAMHSA’s Community Conversations about mental health, guiding community leaders to organize community discussions about mental health that promote recovery and healthy communities. For those interested, view our webinar on facilitating Community Conversations.
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Scholarship
We conducted and translated findings for scholarly journals and professional organizations to share our model of providing TTA and the success of this model. These publications focused on using the Cooperative Extension system to support behavioral health work in rural communities. This includes:
This article used a common framework, the Interactive Systems Framework, to understand how TTA provided by NW ROTAC supported opioid providers in adopting evidence-based approaches.
Cooperative Extension as a Key Partner to Behavioral Health in Rural Communities
This article maps out how Extension, and specifically a Health Extension model, can support community-driven behavioral health efforts to more effectively support opioid prevention, treatment, and recovery.
This article described findings of our needs assessment of opioid prevention, treatment, and recovery providers highlighting the unique needs of rural-based providers.
Our team is currently translating these publications into research briefs, which will be available on our website. Please reach out if you need access to these publications.
IN CONCLUSION
We are grateful for the trust you have placed in us to serve rural communities and providers across the Northwest. We heard from you how necessary rural-focused training and resources are. In the words of one of our webinar participants,
We look forward to leaving behind resources to continue this support. Look for our annual report highlighting details of our activities toward the end of 2024.
With gratitude,
NW ROTAC Co-Directors: Elizabeth Weybright, Sandi Phibbs, and Michelle Peavy
“Having this presented by someone who is committed to working in rural areas and understands the ins- and outs- of what rural life can be, was incredibly refreshing and useful.”
