The University of California today (July 12) announced several actions to help address health-care needs, including substance abuse, in northern New Mexico’s Rio Arriba County.
Under an agreement with the Rio Arriba Family Care Network (RAFCN) and the County of Rio Arriba, UC will provide academic and professional services at no cost through two of its campuses UC San Francisco and UC San Diego the UC Office of the President, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation and the Los Alamos National Laboratory:
The in-kind services, coordinated through the UC Northern New Mexico Office in connection with UC’s management of the Los Alamos laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration, will center on:
Assisting RAFCN in coordinating evaluation activities for its Ayudantes Program. The program seeks to improve access to health care for Rio Arriba County residents with limited English-language proficiency.
Bringing together RAFCN staff with substance abuse treatment experts at UC San Diego’s Pacific Southwest Addition Technology Center. The UC center will offer expertise in the areas of screening and assessment, brief interventions, and enhancing knowledge and clinical skills relevant to substance abuse treatment.
Augmenting the training of substance abuse workers and others who provide general health-care services in Rio Arriba County.
Helping to set up administrative support systems and performance evaluation processes or RAFCN in the implementation of grants the organization has received from federal, county and private sources. Experts from the UC Office of the President, the Los Alamos foundation and the laboratory will offer this assistance.
“This is extremely useful to us,� Lauren Reichelt, RAFCN director and director of Rio Arriba health and human services said of the agreement.
“Having the kind of expertise the University of California is able to offer is desperately needed here,� she added. “It’s amazing what can happen when UC, the lab and a small, impoverished county get together. This is an experiment in health care for rural, minority and under-served community that could set a model for the whole country.�
The agreement was announced in Espanola. Among those present from Rio Arriba County, in addition to Reichelt, were Espanola Mayor Richard Lucero, Espanola City Manager Leonard Padilla, and Rio Arriba County Manager Lorenzo Valdez. Representatives of UC included Regent Velma Montoya; John P. McTague, vice president for laboratory management; Robert L. Van Ness, assistant vice president for laboratory administration; and Rulon Linford, associate vice provost for laboratory programs.
“Rio Arriba County’s efforts to deal with drug abuse and the problems associated with it have concerned me for some time,� said Montoya, a member of the UC Regents’ Committee on Oversight of the Department of Energy Laboratories.
“No single entity or activity can resolve these issues,� Montoya said, “but we hope that the services UC and the laboratory are providing through this collaboration will contribute to the broader effort and directly benefit the people of Rio Arriba County.�
As a key element of the agreement, Carmen Masson, an assistant adjunct professor of psychiatry from UC San Francisco, will work with RAFCN from July through December of this year on the development of RAFCN’s Ayudantes Program and building a relationship between RAFCN staff and the UC San Diego addiction technology center.
“What I plan to do in Rio Arriba County is to identify resources for training and provide consulting to help substance abuse counselors and other healthcare workers to address a variety of problem in area,� Masson said. “There is a need for a better understanding of addiction as disease and knowledge about new methods of treatment.�
Masson, who is fluent in Spanish, is a specialist in substance abuse research and its related problems. She has a doctorate in clinical psychology, has written numerous research articles, and has done research, taught and engaged in public service activities at UC San Francisco since 1995.