Police Responses to Persons With Mental Illness: Going Beyond CIT Training.

Since 1988, a major development to reduce lethal encounters between police and persons displaying signs of mental illness has been the adoption by many police departments of crisis intervention teams (CITs). Created in Memphis, Tennessee, CIT programs incorporate deescalation training, police-friendly drop-off centers, and linkage to community treatment programs. The authors summarize issues discussed at a recent Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration workshop at which participants highlighted the importance of going beyond CIT training to most effectively include police in a crisis care continuum model. Such an approach focuses on how police can be engaged as partners with behavioral health providers who are designing and implementing services in the crisis care continuum. Reframing the approach to police responses to persons in mental health crises offers the prospect of improving both public health and public safety goals.

A campus-community partnership for farmworkers' health: interventions for tomato workers in Tennessee.

BACKGROUND: Migrant farm workers are exposed to job hazards in Tennessee, which is among the top five tomato-producing states. OBJECTIVES: This project sought to cultivate and evaluate a partnership to marshal greater resources to address migrants' concerns and to better prepare future health professionals to address occupational issues. METHODS: In the spring of 2008, an interprofessional student-faculty team at a regional university catalyzed a partnership with a clinic for migrants and a national network caring for the itinerant underserved. RESULTS: Several community-based participatory research (CBPR) activities are underway. The partnership has resulted in the following projects: Use of the Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) method to identify job tasks likely to be injurious, development and use of a health screening questionnaire to capture more information about occupational health, and continuing education seminars for providers and a case-based curriculum module for third-year medical students. CONCLUSIONS: Interprofessional service learning about migrant occupational health issues may have its greatest impact as participating students enter the regional workforce, caring for patients employed in slow-to-change agricultural operations.