Jerome Galea, PhD, LCSW, MSW, an associate professor in the School of Social Work, presented during a webinar hosted by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation. The webinar, "Community Driven Approaches to Providing Mental Health Support: Problem Management Plus in the United States," explored how the evidence-based intervention Project Management Plus (PM+) — which was originally developed by the World Health Organization to address mental health treatment gaps in low- and middle-income countries — is now being implemented in the U.S.
Galea learned about PM+ in Peru through Partners in Health and worked on the project "Enfrentando Problemas Plus (EP+)" in the country. When he began his work with the Building Relationships and Initiatives Dedicated to Gaining Equality (BRIDGE) Clinic at USF, he saw that the clinic had similar patient populations to populations he was working with in Peru. The patients were predominantly Spanish speaking (70%), didn’t have access to health insurance, and many were agricultural workers, undocumented, and living below poverty line.
Having taught community workers in Peru to deliver PM+, he decided he would teach MSW student volunteers to do it as well. In the webinar, he goes into detail of this work of training of five bilingual MSW students at USF to deliver PM+. View the presentation here.