Heike Thiel de Bocanegra, PhD, MPH¹, Jim Rodriguez, MSW, PhD², and Kimberly Hoagwood, PhD². (1) Center for Immigrant Health/Division of Primary Care, New York University, 550 First Ave., New York, NY 10016, 212-263-8783, heike_thiel@yahoo.com, (2) Columbia University Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 1775 Broadway, 7th Fl, New York, NY 10019

In this presentation we will present the experiences of the Child and Adolescent Trauma Treatments and Services Consortium (CATS). CATS is a consortium of seven agencies that provides cognitive behavioral evidence-based assessments, treatments, and services to children and adolescents, ages 5-21, affected by the disaster and by other traumatic events. Because of this unified effort, the CATS Consortium is able to provide a unified continuum of services to children and youth in need of trauma treatments. In addition, an evaluation protocol was developed by the CATS Consortium to collect data across all of the sites on the severity of mental health problems experienced by youth in the project, challenges to implementing evidence-based treatments in schools and clinic settings, and the outcomes associated with receipt of these treatments. A common assessment strategy, design, and implementation analysis is being conducted in the evaluation protocol. The design of the study uses a regression discontinuity analysis to enable comparisons of outcomes to be made across two groups: youth receiving the CATS trauma treatments and youth receiving treatment as usual. CATS obtains comprehensive data at baseline, 3 and 6 months. In addition to baseline assessment data, concurrent measures of therapeutic alliance and symptom severity are collected from clinicians and parents regularly during the course of treatment. In this presentation, we will compare the baseline and follow up scores on the PTSD Reaction Index, depression and anxiety scales of the children.

Learning Objectives:

• To learn effective outreach strategies linking youth to mental health care providers
• To evalute the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral treatments for youth affected by the WTC attack

Keywords: Access and Services, Adult and Child Mental Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.