America Serves New Mexico

AmericaServes works with New Mexicans to create 
New Mexico Serves for Veterans

AmericaServes is a program run by the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University. They have developed a model and process for assisting a large city or state provide coordinated community care for its veteran population. It strives to be a “One Stop Shop” to guide veterans to receive medical care, behavioral healthcare, job placement, housing, transportation and assistance with accessing benefits earned while serving in the U.S. military. Essentially a system that guides veterans to reintegrate into society once discharged from their military service.

The coordinated community care system is an organization that creates smart referrals that match clients to the right services based on eligibility, availability, and capacity. The network community providers then deliver care and services with impact tracked from start to finish.

In 2022 junior money funded Phase I, Landscape Assessment, of NM Serves. The IVMF team traveled extensively throughout NM, visiting many rural, suburban, and urban communities including the Navajo Nation, pueblos, and tribes for 9 months meeting with veterans and the 156 veteran service providers in NM to assess the supply and demand for relevant services. They briefed their survey results and recommendations to the interim Military and Veterans Affairs committee.

Challenges for building a coordinated care system in NM are the large size of the state, serving the rural and urban communities, and designing the optimal network system to serve all veterans and their families.

Phase 2, the Design phase, costs $225,000 and Bernalillo County has issued a letter of support to serve as fiscal agent for the legislators’ funding and the Veterans Integration Center (VIC), non-profit organization, which will host IVMF.

Details of Phase 2, the Design phase:

• IVMF will host a series of listening sessions across the state focused on soliciting feedback from community stakeholders on the design of a coordinated care system in NM. Questions will be centered on data collected and analyzed from Phase I, but will be specifically focused on “What right looks like” for designing a coordinated care system in NM and will focus on questions including but not limited to: network leadership and oversight, centralized vs. regional network infrastructure, technology needs, and sustainability and funding.
• IVMF will also engage with key institutional stakeholders on the above questions to ensure proper feedback and alignment from across community providers, state and federal agencies, and others.
• Upon collecting feedback from across the state, IVMF will draft a roadmap for NM that will detail a recommended network design, implementation timeline and milestones, and other relevant information needed to inform the successful roll out of a coordinated care network in New Mexico.

What’s next?:

• Phase 2, Design, will take about a year to complete. 
• Phase 3, Supporting and Implementation could take a year or longer. 
• Phase 4, Steady State, ensures the system is operating sustainably. 

IVMF’s Director of Community Services, Vincent DelSignore, is available to discuss any aspect of NM Serves and their process. He can be reached at (315) 863-2699 or vrdelsig@syr.edu

Source:https://ivmf.syracuse.edu/programs/community-services/americaserves/