The Collaborative to Advance Health Services is an interdisciplinary team of professionals at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s School of Nursing and Health Studies (CAHS at UMKC). The CAHS at UMKC works to advance health and wellness by bringing health research to practice and supporting people, organizations, and systems through the change process. The CAHS accomplishes this through various training, technical assistance, capacity building, marketing, and strategic communication initiatives in collaboration with local, regional, state, and federal partners. At this time, the CAHS has staff dedicated to over 20 externally funded projects focused on training, technical assistance, and workforce capacity building in the areas of HIV prevention, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections, reproductive and sexual health, problematic substance use, harm reduction, and the intersections of multiple of these health conditions. Some legacy grants in our portfolio have been continuously funded at UMKC for over 30 years. Current funding for CAHS programs includes grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Office of Population Affairs (OPA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and contracts with multiple national and regional partners.
In 2023, the CAHS at UMKC hosted the first-of-its-kind national Syndemic Solutions Summit that brought together 200 leaders from government, community, and research to amplify the importance of inclusive, equitable, and systems-level approaches to whole-person care across multiple epidemics (Jonathan Mermin, Director of NCHHSTP was the keynote speaker).
To advance health and wellness by bringing research to practice, supporting organizations through change processes and providing high quality training and technical assistance to the healthcare workforce.
More than twenty staff and a cadre of specialists and consultants make up the project teams across a portfolio of grants and contracts. Most of the grants have, as a common theme, increasing the adoption and implementation of evidence-based practices in the health, behavioral health and allied health fields.