Local Experience and Outside Expertise Lead to AOT Program Success

Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) is a civil court mandate that requires individuals to participate in community-based mental health services. Southern Alabama has been a success story for how AOT programs can reduce both arrests and psychiatric hospitalizations.

“We’ve seen dramatic improvement across the board,” says Dr. Cindy Gipson, director of crisis and justice-involved services at AltaPointe Health, which is the community mental health provider for southern Alabama. “We’ve seen arrests go down by more than 85% for people enrolled in the programs – and psychiatric hospitalizations have declined by more than 75%. Those are excellent outcomes for both the people we work with and the jurisdictions we serve.”

Broad Expertise

“AltaPointe is the only service provider in southern Alabama that is designated to provide care for people who are under AOT orders,” Gipson says. “And Policy Research Associates (PRA) has been an invaluable partner in helping us develop our AOT programs, evaluate the effectiveness of the programs, and identify opportunities to improve the programs.”

“We worked closely with Richard Van Dorn when determining what sort of data should be collected to allow for meaningful analysis of our treatment efforts under AOT orders. PRA has also helped us develop approaches that allow us to not only get people to engage with the treatment process, but to stay engaged.”

Local Experience

“The work we’ve done with AltaPointe has been driven by what the system is experiencing on the ground,” says Richard Van Dorn, a senior research associate at PRA who has worked with AltaPointe. “Cindy has such an excellent handle on the challenges people under AOT orders are facing, in addition to the challenges that service systems encounter in providing treatment to people under AOT orders. PRA’s role is to use our expertise in a way that complements AltaPointe’s experience – helping to identify effective implementation strategies and which types of data need to be collected to identify opportunities and challenges that can be leveraged to improve treatment and program outcomes.”

“AltaPointe and PRA also have a shared understanding of the importance of data and how it can be used to improve policies and practice as you go – you don’t have to wait for any particular endpoint,” says Van Dorn. “AltaPointe’s focus on responding to data in real time is an important factor in the success they’ve had. It underscores the role that data collection and analysis can play in improving AOT programs anywhere.”

“Being able to tap into the breadth of expertise that PRA has is important, because AOT programs do need to adapt to the changing needs of the people in our program,” Gipson says. “Exchanging ideas and responding to what the data tell us is critical.”

Successful Partnership

“It’s easy to tell if a partnership is successful, because you want to maintain that partnership moving forward,” Gipson says. “I enjoy working with my counterparts at PRA: they’re responsive, there’s mutual respect, and there’s a knowledge base that you’re just not going to get anywhere else. In working with us to improve our practices, PRA has also helped us capture the impact of our work. Implementing successful programs is critical for the people we work with; being able to demonstrate that success to legislators is critical for ensuring those programs continue to be supported in the future when you no longer have grant dollars. That’s how PRA has helped us use our data.”

Policy Research Associates’ Expertise in AOT

Policy Research Associates (PRA) is the national leader in AOT program research and evaluation. Our evaluation expertise spans single-site, multi-site, and state-wide studies that address a range of factors critical to successful program implementation. PRA’s deep experience and leadership make us a strong partner for jurisdictions seeking to build, expand, enhance, and evaluate their AOT initiatives.

Our researchers conducted the first U.S. evaluation of an outpatient commitment program: Bellevue Hospital’s pilot program for court-ordered outpatient treatment in New York City, which operated from 1994 to 1997. Since then, PRA has led major evaluations, including the 2009 “New York State Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program Evaluation,” and supported research partners with national evaluations, including the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation’s “Assisted Outpatient Treatment Grant Program for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness.”

In addition to our research and evaluation expertise, our team has extensive experience supporting AOT program design and implementation. Our technical assistance helps communities, courts, and treatment providers realize the full potential of AOT and improve outcomes for both individuals and communities. Our approach to AOT technical assistance is tailored, practical, and grounded in both data and field experience.

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