The California Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP) was a five-year project funded by California’s Mental Health Services Act (MHSA). This statewide initiative aimed to match community-driven mental health solutions with rigorous data for 35 pilot projects throughout the state, and seven community organizations were funded to serve each of five communities that have historically been underserved, excluded, and provided with substandard mental health care in California: African Americans, Latines, Asian & Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and LGBTQ+ people. The project was administered by the California Office of Health Equity (OHE) and was designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of local mental health interventions through a rigorous evaluation process that was focused around community participation. The San Francisco Community Health Center was funded to implement and evaluate a communications-based intervention called “Let’s Connect,” aimed at improving mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ people in California.
Facente Consulting was contracted to serve as the lead evaluator for this local CRDP evaluation, with primary responsibility for designing and implementing a local evaluation plan, managing IRB approvals and human subject concerns, overseeing data collection, conducting a quantitative analysis of local participant data, and submitting annual evaluation reports to OHE. We collaborated with CRDP’s statewide evaluator based out of Loyola Marymount University to ensure an informative local evaluation.