Volume 72 Number 1, 1994
A Commentary on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program on Chronic Mental Illness
Stephen A. Somers and Marjorie A. Gutman
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program (RWJF) on Chronic Mental Illness created centralized mental health authorities in nine cities as a demonstration project. Evaluation teams, selected after the project began, and a national program office, established to provide technical assistance and to communicate progress and results, worked in tandem with the program staff. The project was evaluated as "logic model" to determine the feasibility of centralized authorities and to estimate their effect on various outcomes. One finding was that service reorganization does not cancel out the need to supply funds or mental health care. The problems of delay in the publication of results and of public officials' reluctance to act without "definitive" research data are described, as are the remedies for these difficulties.
