Projects & Impact

AHP has built its business on applying best practices, many of which we have helped to shape, and real-world, hands-on knowledge to improving systems and business practices for our clients.

In all of the work that we do, we are guided by our mission to improve health and human services systems of care and business operations to help organizations and individuals reach their full potential.

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National Veterans Technical Assistance Center (NVTAC)

The National Veterans Technical Assistance Center (NVTAC) was a partnership among AHP, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Veterans Employment and Training Services. Led by AHP and funded under a cooperative agreement for four years, the NVTAC supported the mission of the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVRP) and its stakeholders. We assembled a cadre of experts knowledgeable about veteran homelessness, workforce development, and adult learning that included veterans committed to helping their service member colleagues.

We tapped the experience of practitioners in the field by facilitating peer-to-peer learning in our national virtual learning community; spotlighting individual grantees and their staff to inform the field and through regional face-to-face events. AHP worked with grantees and convened experts to establish 10 best-practice elements showcased on the NVTAC website and supported implementation through webinars and training.
 
Our work was responsive to our client’s needs. When Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast, we reached out to grantees with resources and established a go-to website for community recovery. When direct service staff needed to build their skills, but grantee organizations could not afford to send staff to training sites, we developed online, instructor-led courses. As more communities wanted to host veteran stand-down events and DOL sought to support these, AHP prepared materials and a website to ease the challenge of organizing an event.
 
We measured learning impacts. Following training, we not only asked if participants were satisfied, we also asked about what they learned and if their participation led to changes in their behavior, practice, or policy.
 
Through NVTAC, AHP quickly became the go-to source for a broad range of technical assistance, training, and policy advice on veterans’ homelessness programs and issues to existing and potential audiences. This has been done through:

  • developing, conducting, and documenting extensive outreach efforts to national, state, and local employers to increase their awareness of HVRP, HFVVWF, IVTP, and SD in order to increase employment and training opportunities for veterans experiencing or at risk of homelessness;
  • identifying, extracting, documenting, and sharing best practices or other case-study-oriented overviews, as defined and directed by VETS;
  • assisting VETS leadership by suggesting and conducting research and program improvement-based studies, as ultimately defined and directed by VETS; and 
  • providing consulting to an external national evaluation of the HVRP.
Among the major accomplishments in this project, AHP developed remote service-informed technical assistance and research-driven virtual training to grantees in settings ranging from urban to rural across the nation, serving women veterans, incarcerated veterans, veterans in families, Native American veterans, and single male veterans. Training topics included improving employment outcomes to justice-involved veterans, approaches to job-driven training, and meeting the needs of veterans with behavioral health and other challenges. In addition, NVTAC has provided onsite grantee-specific assistance to improve program operations, integrate use of best practices, and achieve desired outcomes in the Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco regions. NVTAC developed a number of electronic and print materials, including brief video interviews with experienced grantees, briefing papers, research results, website updates, and a self-paced elearning course on job retention for veterans.
 
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SAMHSA’s Homeless and Housing Resource Network

SAMHSA contracted with AHP to provide training and technical assistance (TA) on housing and homelessness to SAMHSA Homeless Program Branch (HPB) grantees and other homelessness housing and service providers operating across the United States and U.S. territories. Housing and service programs are united by a vision of ending homelessness by supporting individuals through a process of change as they improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential. 

The goals of this project include the following: 
 

  • Promoting the adoption of best practices for serving people who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of becoming homeless and have chronic mental illness or co-occurring disorders; 

  • Increasing workforce capacity through TA and training;
  • Disseminating information to the homelessness services field in support of SAMHSA’s strategic initiatives;
  • Collaborating with other agencies and organizations to improve the coordination of SAMHSA activities focused on addressing homelessness and building effective partnerships; and
  • Measuring meaningful change.

The HHRN TA team is led by AHP and includes partners HomeBase, Policy Research Associates (PRA), JBS International, the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD), and Abt Associates.  

Through AHP's team, HHRN provides assistance to the public and to HPB grantees, which includes PATH, Cooperative Agreements to Benefit Homeless Individuals (CABHI), and Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals (GBHI) grantees that touch people in every state and territory. HHRN serves as the TA and training resource for SAMHSA. 


Examples of work included updating, enhancing, and field testing two evidence-based practices KITs focused on people experiencing homelessness—the Permanent Supportive Housing Evidence-Based Practices KIT and the Integrated Treatment for Co-occurring Disorders Evidence-Based Practices KIT. In addition, HHRN has conducted multifaceted, interagency policy academies on chronic homelessness in collaboration with other federal agencies, such as a policy academy on youth homelessness and a policy academy on outreach and engagement to people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.  
 

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