Six tip sheets were developed to disseminate findings from the Care Partners project. The tip sheets, which map onto the lessons learned from this project, provide guidance for Care Partners sites and other interested clinics and CBOs for addressing the main challenges of providing partnered collaborative care.
The tip sheets were developed in partnership with the seven original Care Partners sites in cohort 1 at our meeting together in May 2017. Initial topic areas for tip sheets were identified based on information from the qualitative data and focused on six areas where sites faced consistent challenges: 1) identifying and screening patients, 2) engaging patients in depression care, 3) engaging family, 4) engaging primary care providers, leadership and other essential staff, 5) establishing task-sharing for depression care, and 6) developing partnerships around the Care Partners project. At the annual meeting, individuals from Care Partners sites participated in a brainstorming exercise where they listed guidance on the six challenges. In addition, Care Partners sites that applied for continuation grants addressed how they were going to navigate potential challenges in these areas in an attachment to their proposals. We combined the Care Partners sites’ insights on each of these six areas with our analysis of the qualitative data to finalize the tip sheets.