Culturally Specific Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Services

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Health inequities — including mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) — continue to affect certain communities Minnesota. It has been found that one solution to this is to offer services that acknowledge and support the needs of people in a culturally-specific, trauma-informed way.

Grants
Areas of Focus
CEMIG providers
Evaluation

Grants

The purpose of the Cultural and Ethnic Minority Infrastructure Grant (CEMIG) program is to:
- Provide culturally-specific, trauma-informed mental health and substance use disorder services within targeted cultural and minority communities in Minnesota, and
- Expand these services by increasing the number of licensed mental health professionals and licensed alcohol and drug counselors, as well as other behavioral health supports such as Peer/Family Specialists and Recovery Peer Specialists, from ethnic and cultural minority communities.
Communities of focus for CEMIG include:
- African
- African American
- American Indian
- Hispanic, Latino
- Asian
- Immigrants
- Refugees
- Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ+)
In addition to the cultural and ethnic population of focus, the Department of Human Services recognizes the importance of providing access to not only our urban areas, but greater Minnesota and rural areas which are rapidly growing with a diverse population of ethnic and cultural minorities. The goal is to ensure SUD and mental health services in the state are culturally responsive and meet the cultural needs of the target communities served.
Areas of Focus
- Workforce development: recruiting, supporting, training and supervision activities for mental health and substance use disorder practitioners and professionals
- Supporting members of cultural and ethnic minorities communities qualify as behavioral health professionals, practitioners, clinical supervisors and recovery peer specialists and peer/family specialists.
- Culturally specific outreach, early intervention, trauma-informed services and recovery support
- Provide trauma-informed culturally specific mental health and substance use/misuse supports and services for children and families, youth, and/or adults from cultural and ethnic minority backgrounds that are uninsured or underinsured.
- Expansion/infrastructure improvement activities especially in Greater Minnesota
- Increasing the availability of culturally specific mental health services for children, youth and families, and/or adults, and/or substance use/misuse services for individuals from cultural and ethnic minorities within the State.
CEMIG providers

Providers (PDF)

The CEMIG grant program is a state and federally funded program since 2008. Most recent grants were awarded in 2018 to 22 providers totaling $2.746 million per year for three years for both mental health and substance use disorder supports and services.

Mental Health Only
- Change, Inc.
- Center for Victims of Torture
- Counseling Services of Southern MN
- Kente Circle Training Institute
- Progressive Individual Resources, Inc.
- The Family Partnership
- Watercourse Counseling
- Wilder
SUD Only
- Hmong American Partnership
- Life House
- MIPRTC/Mash-Ka-Wisen
- Turning Point
Integrated Mental Health & SUD
- American Indian Family Center
- Avivo
- Brakins Consulting & Psychological Services, LLC
- CLUES
- JustUs Health
- Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center
- Pact 4 Families Collaborative
- Vietnamese Social Services
- White Earth Tribal Nation
- Zumbro Valley
Current grants run through June 30, 2022.
Evaluation

This evaluation is a three-year project, with Rainbow Research as the contracted vendor, that seeks to assess the achievement of both the program-wide and agency-specific outcomes. The evaluation focuses on these grant-funded goals of the program: cultural responsiveness/competency, evidence of impact on health disparities, culturally-specific services, workforce development, and the professional capacity of cultural providers.

The following are the key evaluation questions that the evaluation seeks to answer:
- To what extent did the programs successfully engage representatives from cultural and ethnic communities in order to advance health equity?
- To what extent did the programs provide quality culturally competent and responsive supports and services to cultural communities?
- What appear to be the key variables (related to the interventions and to the population groups) associated with success? Where do opportunities and gaps remain?
- How many qualified mental health providers, LADCs and Peer Specialists from cultural and ethnic minorities or underserved communities can be attributed to the workforce development component of the initiative?
The evaluation effort will engage providers to develop an initiative-wide learning plan that will include the key evaluation questions, indicators and sources and methods for gathering the data to respond to the questions. The grant initiative has established a Community of Practice that will include a focus on both service provision and on evaluation capacity building. Data gathering for the evaluation will also include annual focus groups with culturally specific providers, community or client-level surveys, and cultural community key informant interviews. The monitoring and evaluation also includes regular (quarterly) service data collection on services provided, demographic summaries, and communities engaged through outreach efforts.

CEMIG will provide each grantee provider with an annual infographic-style data brief. An aggregate report with summarized finding across all grantees and will offer suggestions and recommendations for program improvement, policy development, or systems adjustments.