# Enhancing Mental Health Treatment Engagement among Probationers: Adapting an Organizational Linkage Implementation Strategy for Specialty Mental Health Probation

> **NIH NIH K01** · UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL · 2022 · $157,014

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
People with serious mental illnesses (SMI) are disproportionately represented throughout the criminal justice
system, the vast majority of whom are on probation and parole. Implementing evidence-based practices to
address the needs of justice-involved people with SMI requires an understanding of the multilevel factors that
impact intervention implementation in both the mental health and criminal justice systems and the expertise to
address these factors. Dr. Tonya Van Deinse’s proposed K01 training plan and research study, under the
expert guidance of an NIH-funded mentoring team, will provide her with intensive substantive and
methodological training and research experience to become a leading expert in implementing complex, cross-
agency interventions to address the needs of justice-involved people with SMI. Specialty mental health
probation (SMHP) is an evidence-informed intervention that aims to engage people with SMI in treatment and
divert them from the criminal justice system. Although high-fidelity SMHP can increase mental health and
substance use service engagement, improve mental health symptoms, and reduce rates of rearrest, jail days
and probation violations, effective implementation of SMHP is context-dependent and relies on inter-
organizational relationships between SMHP officers and mental health service providers. Specifically, SMHP
requires officers to increase treatment linkage and resource coordination and serve as boundary spanners who
bridge the interagency coordination and collaboration gap between probation officers and mental health
service providers. Given the importance of inter-organizational relationships in implementing SMHP, it is
necessary to assess the multilevel factors that impact its cross-agency implementation context and to develop
implementation strategies to enhance inter-organizational relationships. This proposal adapts an existing
implementation approach to enhance probation officers’ capacity for coordination, collaboration, and linking
probationers with SMI to treatment. This adapted implementation approach, to be called Networking to Engage
in Treatment: Working within Officer-Resource Collaboratives (NETWORC), will be developed and tested via
the following aims: (1) identify multi-level factors that inhibit SMHP officers’ capacity to link individuals with SMI
to treatment providers; (2) conduct a process evaluation of the NETWORC implementation approach; and (3)
evaluate the efficacy, acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of the collaborative implementation toolkit.
Findings from this study will provide preliminary data about the feasibility and efficacy of the adapted
implementation strategy and will be used to develop Dr. Van Deinse’s subsequent R01, a pragmatic cluster
randomized trial using multilevel analyses to examine the impact of the implementation strategy on
probationer, officer, and inter-organizational levels.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10591778
- **Project number:** 1K01MH129619-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL
- **Principal Investigator:** Tonya Bloomer Van Deinse
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $157,014
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-09-09 → 2026-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10591778

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10591778, Enhancing Mental Health Treatment Engagement among Probationers: Adapting an Organizational Linkage Implementation Strategy for Specialty Mental Health Probation (1K01MH129619-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10591778. Licensed CC0.

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