PROVIDENCE – Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island today announced that it is receiving a two-year $261,000 grant for a project, in collaboration with Beacon Health Strategies and Butler Hospital, to develop and test strategies for improving the care of Latino patients with depression.

The grant is one of 11 nationwide provided by Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, a national program office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, housed at the University of Chicago, that evaluates the efficacy of local programs that seek to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care.

The local project was chosen in part because depression is a disease for which the recommended standard of care is clear, yet evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in care is strong. It will help Finding Answers and the RWJ Foundation to understand what works, or doesn’t work, to improve health care for minority patients.

“There is an urgent need to move beyond documenting the existence of health care disparities and start finding solutions that will eliminate them,” said Dr. Marshall H. Chin, associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and director of Finding Answers, which with the help of the grant recipients aims to "identify innovative, replicable and sustainable" solutions.

Additional information is available at www.nhpri.org.