Engaging African American Faith-based leaders in a Substance Use Learning Collaborative

The long-term goal of this pilot study is to increase access to Substance Use Disorder (SUD) care for African Americans by engaging faith-based Leaders (FBLs) through a learning collaborative (LC) model. Based on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement model, a LC is a short-term (6- to 15-month) learning system that brings together teams (e.g., FBLs, community members, behavioral health/SUD and social service providers) to seek improvement in a focused topic area. The immediate goal of this project is to increase FBLs knowledge of substance use and SUDs and to assess FBLs perceptions of engaging with behavioral health providers (BHPs) by implementing an existing LC curriculum. This pilot exploratory project will pave the way for future initiatives focused on increasing SUD care in underserved Black communities through collaborations between FBLs and BHPs.