The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA) routinely funds behavioral health services in school-based settings—something active grant writers are likely to know a lot about—and one of its recent Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) is for Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education); in this NOFO, “advancing wellness” and “resiliency” essentially means providing mental-health services to youth in K – 12 schools. As of this writing, the FY ’23 Project AWARE NOFO was released February 27, with a deadline of April 28. Grant writers and nonprofit leaders interested in school-based mental health and wellness should be aware of the cyclical nature of the Project AWARE NOFOs. In addition, we’ve written many funded SAMSHA and other grant applications for school-based behavioral health programs. Call us at 800-540-8906 ext. 1, or contact us, about getting your piece of the Project AWARE pie.
SAMHSA’s Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education) is notable for its eligibility criteria: while states and state units are eligible, so are “health facilities”—which likely means that federally qualified health centers (FQHCs—sometimes called “section 330 providers”) can, and should, apply. Many are already operating school-based health centers through Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funding: so Project AWARE can be used to supplement existing efforts at those school-based sites, including sites that are based on mobile units. The tricky part is that SAMHSA wants applicants to get letters of commitment from state education agencies and/or local education agencies (AKA “school districts”); FQHCs that are already serving school districts via school-based health centers are likely to have the existing relationships in place to make sure they get appropriate letters of support that will make their applications viable. The state letter might require more politicking than is desirable, but the amounts of money available make the effort worthwhile.
Project AWARE has $38 million available for 21 awards of up to $1.8 million per year, without any matching requirements. SAMHSA uses a confusing NIH system called the “eRA Commons” for awards, and it gives itself six weeks to create new accounts. Usually new eRA Commons accounts don’t take six weeks to create, but SAMHSA gives themselves the right to take that long. So, if interested in applying for this program, make your organization’s eRA Commons registration is up to date.
Project AWARE activities revolve around classic mental health efforts: increasing awareness, mental health literacy, fostering resilience, offering “supports” (which presumably means therapy and/or medication; FQHCs that already have a child psychiatrist on staff will again be at an advantage here, despite what we understand are relatively low reimbursement rates from Medicaid for child psychiatrists), and similar, and similarly vague, activities. Children and teens ages K-12 are eligible participants, although we’re not sure what teaching kindergartners or first graders about “mental health” is going to do, besides perhaps confuse them. Nonprofit healthcare providers also must have a dedicated state education agency (SEA) position at quarter time, along with other coordination positions, which seems excessive to us, but we’re also not SAMHSA. Applicants must “conduct a needs assessment” and then “develop an implementation plan”—so this is a planning project, before the implementation itself. We’ve worked on a variety of planning, then implementation projects, and have written many essays on the subject—see, for example, Know Your Charettes!
We’re extremely familiar with evidence-based mental-health treatment modalities, so the list of mandatory and optional activities offered by SAMHSA won’t stymie us. We’ve worked on projects that seek to, for example, provide school-based mental health services by training teachers in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), such that the teachers can learn to recognize mental health challenges and then refer youth to appropriate resources. The problem with such approaches will be obvious to anyone who’s worked in schools: with one hundred to one hundred and sixty students assigned to each teacher (at least in middle and high schools), most teachers aren’t able to get to know most of them. There’s simply not enough time in the day for any kind of real connectivity to occur there, so students, apart from the ones with the most obvious challenges, are often missed. For Project AWARE, $1.8 million sounds like a lot of money, but, spread it across thousands of students and hundreds of teachers, and it winds up not being so much on a per-head basis.
Still, the Project AWARE funding is clearly meant to supplement other funding—thus, our speculation that FQHCs should be good applicants, or good partners for SEAs, LEAs, and other kinds of eligible applicants. FQHCs are already familiar with providing healthcare services, including behavioral health services, to at-risk populations. Not all FQHCs will be familiar with SAMHSA project submissions, but we sure are, and, thus, interested applicants should call us at 800.540.8906, or send us an email, because we can help applicants make the most of their SAMHSA Project AWARE applications. Call us at 800-540-8906 ext. 1 or email seliger@seliger.com for fast free fee quote. We’ll write your entire Project AWARE proposal or edit your draft for a reasonable flat fee.
