Technology Transfer and Organizational Resilience in the age of COVID-19



Michael S. Shafer, Ph.D.
Pacific Southwest Addiction Technology Transfer Center
Arizona State University

February 4-6, 2020, 39 behavioral health professionals representing 13 agencies throughout HHS Region 9 gathered in Oakland, California for three days to participate in the PSATTC’s Organizational Process Improvement Initiative (OPII) Change Facilitator Academy, launching a 10-month, long-term intensive technical assistance program. Each agency’s group of newly trained facilitators returned home with a plan to brief their Executive Sponsor (who had previously provided a letter of commitment for staff to attend) and hold an organizational change team kick off meeting within 30-45 days. Schedules were coordinated to ensure that I could travel to and attend each of these meetings; no small feat considering sites were located in two states (CA & AZ) and two Pacific Jurisdictions (RMI & CNMI) half a world away. This wordle, captured at the conclusion of the 3-day Academy, denotes the spirit and emotion of the participants.

These are agencies that were ready for change and innovation; they had applied to the PSATTC OPII program to enhance their ability to do so. Selected agencies were required to survey their staff using the TCU Organizational Readiness to Change Assessment. Academy participants had to view three hours of asynchronous video modules before arriving in Oakland. CEOs had to provide a letter of commitment with specific deliverables and action items associated with the OPII model.

And then COVID-19 happened. Site visits were cancelled, kick off meetings were put on hold and change teams suspended, as agencies responded with immediate crisis management actions to protect staff and patients and begin to reimagine service engagement with clients in a physically-distant manner. One agency executive director approved $80,000 in expenditures related to ramping her agency’s telehealth capacity in the two weeks following implementation of her state’s stay at home order. In late March and early April, however, the most important thing these agencies had to focus on changing and innovating was protecting their staff and patient’s safety.

In the four months since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, six of the 13 teams have resumed meeting regularly, virtually, and advancing in the 4-phased OPII model. Two of the agencies withdrew their participation, while one agency postponed their change team launch until July. Our ATTC team pivoted our TA procedures. We launched a series of group and individual agency email and zoom meeting communications encouraging agencies to consider altering their improvement change goal to address agency-pressing COVID related issues (such as telehealth adoption). In lieu planned site visits, I began holding Zoom check-ins with each agency every 4-6 weeks. Using Zoom’s recording and transcription capacities has proven a great innovation for documentation and evaluation purposes! We launched a monthly 1-hour Community of Practice (CoP) Zoom session to introduce virtual facilitation tools and skills (such as Zoom and Mural; this portion of the CoP is called the “spark session”) to support facilitators’ virtual team facilitation skill development. These virtual CoP sessions also afford an opportunity for agencies to check-in on their team progress in the OPII change model, while sharing facilitation successes and struggles. These communications are providing insights into the organizational resilience of these agencies in the face of massive short- and yet-to-be-defined long-term changes, and the impact of an ATTC-mediated technical assistance model on strengthening their capacity for technology transfer and innovation.

ATTC Region 2: Preparing and Managing Natural Disasters




Robert Peralta De Jesus, MA, MHS
Northeast & Caribbean ATTC


The Institute of Research, Education and Services in Addiction at the Universidad Central del Caribe, School of Medicine has provided various trainings for first responders, community leaders and healthcare providers. In early January of this year, with the atmospheric events that occurred in Puerto Rico, being impacted by earthquakes, we developed a series of trainings in order to train first responders, community leaders, and healthcare providers to be able to cover the needs of citizens who were directly and indirectly affected. The first training was Psychological First Aid, based on scientific evidence to help children, adolescents, adults and families to face the immediate consequences of disasters or acts of terrorism. It was designed to reduce the initial distress produced by traumatic events, promote adaptive functioning and coping skills. We then provided a training in Psychological Strategies for disaster recovery so that the trainees could acquire skills in managing distress and coping with the stress caused by the events that occurred. Given the situation that the first responders and healthcare providers were going through, we decided to provide them with the tools and training they would need to avoid Compassion Fatigue. This series of trainings were offered in both languages ​​(English and Spanish) for both Puerto Rico and the USVI, and they were also modified to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of our commitment to educate and train during the pandemic, we offered a training titled; Skills for managing the isolation period among people recovering from substance use disorders. This was aimed for first responders, to offer tools to people who are in the recovery process with a substance use disorder, in the face of stressors that can cause social isolation due to the pandemic. Understanding the impact that this can have on the family, we also offered a training titled; How to prepare the family to offer support to a family member who is recovering during isolation.
This training was aimed at mental health workers to provide tools for the families of those still in treatment for substance use disorder during COVID-19, in which everyone must remain at home.

Given the uncertainty of what might happen in the future, we set out to offer training based on TAP 34; Emergency Response Planning: Behavioral Health Services for People Using Psychoactive Substances. Emergency response planning is an institutional standard, as it enables the continuity of essential services for communities in critical circumstances. The effectiveness of a plan depends on its consistency with the needs of the population it serves. This webinar is intended to integrate behavioral health services for people who use psychoactive substances as an essential part of a comprehensive emergency response plan.

It is our expectation to continue to provide trainings to all first responders, community leaders and healthcare professionals so they can provide quality service to all that are in need of there assistance.