| Depression-Specific Treatments for Patients Seeking Care within a Public Emergency Department
Project Description
The project addresses the question of how to make quality depression care more accessible for low-income, minority populations. Although quality improvement interventions for depression in primary care settings have proven effective at improving access to and quality of depression care. Low-income, minority patients disproportionately utilize the emergency department (ED) as a surrogate for primary care and are rarely screened or provided with depression treatment in ED. In one of the largest public sector EDs in the United States serving mostly low-income Latinos, USC will assess whether a depression intervention that uses Latino community health workers (Promotoras) and a bilingual/ bicultural social worker can improve access to, and utilization of, depression care. The involvement of USC’s Departments of Medicine, Psychiatry and Emergency Medicine in this project provides cross-discipline collaboration and will provide insights on how to screen for and improve the delivery of depression-specific treatments in the ED.
Lead Organization
University of Southern California
Principal Investigator:
Sarita A. Mohanty, MD, MPH
For More Information
Please Contact:
Sarita Mohanty, MD, MPH
samohant@usc.edu
| 
