Kate Hardy1, Tamara Sale2; 1Stanford University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 2Oregon Health & Science University- Portland State University School of Public Health
There has been increased awareness in the United States of the need to develop specialist early psychosis services. Concurrent to this increase in awareness is dedicated federal funding to support the development of Coordinated Specialty Care (CSC) services. This recent growth has resulted in an increased demand for training and technical assistance specific to service models and interventions for early psychosis. However, associated with this increased demand is the challenge of training a workforce distributed across a large geographical area and the need to coordinate training efforts and technical assistance dissemination to avoid duplication. The Prodromal and Early Psychosis Program Network (PEPPNET) was founded in 2014 to support widespread growth of early psychosis care in the community. It consists of several different working groups all related to the dissemination and implementation of early psychosis services. The Training and Technical Assistance (TA) workgroup meets on a monthly basis and is comprised of professionals who offer training and TA nationally. The workgroup was formed in recognition of the challenges associated with widespread dissemination and the desire to coordinate training efforts to ensure sustainability. This symposium will present the National Early Psychosis Training and TA Guidelines and will highlight practices that have evolved to reduce duplication of training and TA efforts nationally. In addition, efforts to ensure sustainability of practice, as the demand for early psychosis service development continues in the United States, will be discussed.
