CPCA Partners with UCSF on Dyadic Care

CPCA is excited to announce a new project in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco’s (UCSF) Dyadic Technical Assistance Center. This project is funded by the Department of Health Care Services’ (DHCS) Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, which seeks to develop and implement a dyadic care evidence-based practice in California’s community health centers. This evidence-based practice model for dyadic care is organized into three tiers of services and eight core components to make sure all families in the practice receive support aligned with their needs.

While evidence-based practices provide the clinical foundation, building on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Bright Futures Guidelines, community health center experience has been that they do not address the operational or soft skills care teams need to be highly successful. To address this need, the UCSF Center for Advancing Dyadic Care in Pediatrics, led by Dr. Kathryn Margolis, has piloted an intensive, adaptable, and evolving curriculum for public health systems in San Francisco and Santa Clara, teaching the critical skills necessary to expand dyadic integrated behavioral health services in community health settings.

In addition, DHCS recently added dyadic services as a Medi-Cal benefit starting January 1, 2023, supporting the expansion and access of dyadic care services. Additionally, DHCS is working on a State Plan Amendment with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services that would address reimbursement policy for dyadic services provided by Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Centers on the same day as other billable services. In light of this increased access to reimbursement for dyadic services within Medi-Cal, CPCA’s dyadic care grant activities will also support a greater awareness of how to utilize the new Dyadic and Dyadic Caregiver benefits.

Throughout the project timeline from 2024 to 2026, CPCA will support UCSF in strengthening the statewide infrastructure for adopting an evidence-based practice for dyadic care. CPCA and UCSF’s collaboration will merge the non-clinical foundational infrastructure with the core evidence-based practice ethos and expand this dyadic care curriculum to health centers statewide.

California community health centers will soon be able to participate in this project via live events, such as webinars and virtual community of practice forums, as well as learning materials – including recorded webinars, video series, instructional design documents, and asynchronous learning sessions – which can be accessed at any time. CPCA looks forward to expanding knowledge and resources around dyadic care through this partnership with UCSF, and to expanding dyadic care services across the state. Stay tuned for more information as this project gets started!