LSF Health Systems announces Innovation Challenge Winners
Sulzbacher’s CHOP program and Starting Point’s Talkable Communities Win Top Honors
JACKSONVILLE, Fla (OCT. 20, 2021) – LSF Health Systems announced Tuesday the winners of its inaugural Virtual Behavioral Health Innovation Challenge. Top honors in the Judges Award Category went to the Sulzbacher Center, for its Chronically Homeless Offenders Program (CHOP) that works to divert homeless individuals with mental health challenges from jail.
The top prize was sponsored by PS27 Ventures, a Jacksonville company that provides resources to start-ups with great ideas to help them be successful.
CHOP breaks the cycle of homelessness and associated crimes by offering an array of services including
temporary housing, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, job placement, peer counseling and other support. Partners in the program include the State Attorney’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office, Salvation Army Correctional Services, the Clerk of the Court, Duval County judges, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and LSF Health Systems.
Another Northeast Florida behavioral health program, Talkable Communities, submitted by Starting Point Behavioral Healthcare, won first place in the People’s Choice category. The top prize was sponsored by Janssen Neuroscience, a pharmaceutical company of Johnson & Johnson.
Innovation in behavioral health care was the theme of LSF Health System’s virtual summit held Tuesday The event included presentations and speeches from, among others, Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Shevaun Harris and Nick Kittle, author of Sustainovation, Building Sustainable Innovation, One Wildly Creative Idea at a Time.
The virtual event was a prelude to LSF Health Systems’ live Second Annual Behavioral Health Innovation Summit in April.
“The challenges we face today in behavioral health are too big to confront with only solutions that have worked in the past,” said Dr. Christine Cauffield, CEO of LSF Health Systems. “We launched the Innovation Challenge to encourage leaders to share how they’re addressing these complex issues. The response has been tremendous. We look forward to sharing more best practices as well as practical approaches that promote innovations in behavioral healthcare at our spring summit in April 2022.”
