The Louisiana State University Health Science Center School of Public Health has a strong history of successful reform work in assessment and treatment practices for the youth in the secure-care settings of Louisiana's Juvenile Justice System (JJS). We welcome this opportunity to reallocate efforts to prevention and early intervention aspects of the JJ continuum of care. The LSUHSC SoPH faculty has extensive backgrounds in community-based intervention. The LSUHSC SoPH also supports the public health aspect of intervention by clearly identifying risk and protective factors of populations. This model applies perfectly to the JJS and the extensive body of literature defining the risk and protective factors that need to be assessed and addressed.
Dr. Stephen Phillippi, Project Director (i.e. Principal Investigator) has a substantial history in developing, managing and providing direct care services along the full range of the JJS continuum of care. This includes work with Juvenile Drug Court, Families In Need of Services, adolescent substance abuse treatment, family-based interventions, school-based interventions, and mental health programming in the community. Through Program Evaluation activities, Dr. Phillippi directs efforts to assess health, mental health, dental and training services. At the core of these evaluation efforts is a continuous review of timelines, access, and appropriateness of healthcare delivered to youth.
Dr. Phillippi was a founding member of the Louisiana FINS Association (board of directors) and Southeastern Louisiana Delinquency Prevention Council (board of directors/vice president), and the Juvenile Justice Coalition of St. Tammany Parish/County. He has served as the LSUHSC Juvenile Justice Program's liaison to Louisiana's Juvenile Justice Commission, which was the group that assisted in many of the efforts resulting in the legislated Louisiana Juvenile Justice Reform Act.
He has provided numerous state and local trainings, including "best-practice" models of mental health treatment, evidence-based practices in juvenile justice, empirically supported screening and assessment, and research driven adolescent substance abuse treatment. He was a liaison to the State of Louisiana Supreme Court on behalf of the Louisiana FINS Association and was contracted by the court to deliver FINS intake and assessment training to every district in Louisiana.