ASAP Texas Launches ACTION II Learning Collaborative

The Association of Substance Abuse Programs in Texas represents over 60 community based non-profit substance abuse treatment and prevention organizations. Their mission is to ensure that all Texans have full access to whatever substance abuse services they require, and serve as a conduit for sharing information between providers and the Department of State Health Services.

ASAP Texas spends a great deal of time on government relations by working with the Texas legislature, SSA, and several federal organizations to advocate favorable policies and increased funding for it's provider constituency. Recently, ASAP Texas has launched an initiative to provide regular training to its members in order to foster a culture of process and business practice improvement.

"Many of our members don't know the NIATx fundamentals, so we will be offering training to our members and encouraging them to join the ACTION Campaign II," says Cynthia Humphrey, Executive Director of ASAP Texas. "Many of our members had joined the ACTION I Campaign, but were not really involved in implementing the NIATx Promising Practices. We hope to change that."

In an effort to promote the use of process improvement practices by its members, ASAP Texas has launched a learning collaborative to share ideas and success stories through monthly conference calls and membership meetings. NIATx sent representatives to meet with the ASAP Texas member organizations to help start the collaborative and to introduce the ACTION Campaign II. The first learning collaborative conference will be held in June and will be focused on attaining executive leadership buy-in of the NIATx model. The monthly conference calls are expected to begin soon and will provide a forum for members to cite examples of their own process improvement projects, and to seek advice on how to implement such projects.

ASAP Texas will strongly encourage its members to join the ACTION Campaign II, and plan on promoting it to the membership by frequent mentions in their newsletter, links to the campaign on their website, and NIATx overview presentations at the membership conferences. Ms. Humphrey explains, "there are so many small, easy ways for our members to achieve process improvement, and we just want to expose them to what's new out there."