Resource Mapping for Mental Health Services

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2011

The mental Health Services Act passed by California voters in 2004 increased the Department’s ability to expand mental health services and develop necessary infrastructure needed to support the expansion of services. This transformation required a targeted approach of identifying high-risk populations in need of mental health services in order to implement new programs in these high-need areas. A mapping tool called Internet mapping Framework (IMF) was developed to identify the high-risk populations, their geographic locations, and their proximity to mental health services. The IMF tool is used to view information and conduct spatial analysis of high-risk populations such as number of suicides, teen pregnancies, high school dropout rate and the disparity of services around these high-risk populations. The IMF tool stores data on services such as provider locations, census data such as population and poverty estimates, clinical data such as number of consumers served and geographic boundary layers that include both political and service area boundaries such as Service Planning Areas, Supervisorial districts, etc. The availability of this information in a single location allows the users to view provider, consumer, and high-risk population information on an interactive map within any political or service area jurisdiction boundary. Managers and analysis are able to use the IMF tool to make informed decisions about disparities and gaps in mental health services and identify high-need areas to implement expanded mental health services.