Our Community of Practice is led by a highly collaborative team, working together on very specific projects, and creating tools for the benefit of all community mental health centers.
Our Mission
Work together on specific areas to create tools for the benefit of all community of behavioral health centers and the patients we serve.
Our Process
We work in ‘scrums’, which are mission-based frameworks for teams to solve distinct problems within a specified time.
The Community of Practice (CoP) consists of leaders and stakeholders from community mental health centers, led by an Advisory Board. This board is comprised of administrators and practitioners representing community behavioral and mental health centers across the United States, with a dedicated steering committee responsible for coordinating and propelling the group’s initiatives and outcomes. To ensure each scrum or project operates with efficiency and agility, a small team from the CoP is involved, contributing to the rapid progress of each endeavor.
Based on the principles of a project management scrum, team members are motivated to engage in open communication and work closely together within the scrum framework. The accelerated timeline facilitates a structured project schedule, encompassing the entire journey from project initiation to its successful conclusion. This process involves breaking down the project into smaller, manageable tasks and milestones, with specific deadlines assigned to each. At the end of the 6-month scrum, a completed output is delivered.
To determine the objective of a project, we start by considering specific challenges that are common to community mental health centers. In the first month of the scrum, the Advisory Board establishes a well-defined objective, with a comprehensive grasp of the project’s purpose and the issue it intends to address. This often involves defining specific goals and outcomes that the project should achieve.
It’s crucial to gather input from stakeholders and team members, conduct research, and define what kind of data is relevant to the project objective. This may include surveys, interviews, observations, or data from existing sources. Once collected, we analyze the data to draw meaningful insights and use them to make informed decisions on how to best achieve the objective and provide a solution to the challenge — the output.
The deliverable at the end of a scrum can vary depending on the project’s nature and objectives. It’s typically a tangible outcome that showcases the work accomplished during the scrum. Some common deliverables include: White Paper: If the project involves research or analysis, the deliverable could be a detailed white paper summarizing the findings and recommendations. Process Improvement Tool: In process optimization projects, the deliverable may be a tool or framework for improving workflows and operations. Prototypes or Mockups: For design projects, the deliverable might be visual prototypes or mockups of the final product. Reports or Documentation: It could also include comprehensive reports, user manuals, or other relevant documentation.
Reyna Taylor, Vice President of Public Policy and Advocacy, National Council for Mental Wellbeing
Steering Committee
Erica Moore, Director of Operations, The STARR Coalition, Arkansas/Kentucky
James J. Whalen, MD, Faculty, Faculty of Capacity Development (FCD) and Psychiatrist, Director EMG, Gateway Mental Health Center, Rhode Island
Jeremy Whitty, Co-Founder and Director, Faculty of Capacity Development (FCD) and Director of Development, The Global Health Network, Oxford University
