MAPS is a small, member-supported and member-directed, collaborative project to design and empirically evaluate strategies for reforming administrative, regulatory, purchasing and/or organizational practices that are impeding quality improvement within systems of care. Currently, four state partners are working with TRI: North Carolina; Maryland; Massachusetts, and New Jersey, and a number of additional states are actively planning with TRI to join the program. (A separate "MAP-C" program for California counties is being organized since it is the counties that contract for treatment services in that State.)

MAPS is supported by the partnering states through a membership fee, with TRI playing host to the group and providing technical expertise, as well as evaluation and analytical support.

It was apparent from the outset of MAPS that states wanted at least four things from TRI:

• a safe environment within which to be able to discuss strategic issues;
• The most recent information and scientific findings about specific financing, purchasing, and organizational issues and strategies; including those that involve healthcare and/or the criminal justice system.
  
• Assistance with planning, implementation, and evaluating policy initiatives, including
  legislative briefings; and cost-offset studies and,
• Validation/justification (formative evaluation) for their approaches.

The basic MAPS membership consists of three components. In the first component, MAPS members participate in two, one-day policy forums per year convened by TRI on specific issues of mutual interest. The forums join the state participants in MAPS with TRI staff, along with other relevant experts, to foster discussion of a specific issue and to develop consensus strategies for moving the issue forward. Policy papers and other relevant materials are used as a springboard for discussion at the forums. In addition to the policy forums, MAPS members are invited to participate in an invitation-only conference convened by TRI and the Wharton School that applies knowledge gained from other industries to issues that are emerging in the treatment industry.

In the second component of MAPS, members select specific policy, performance, business, organization, and/or financing projects that they would like to pilot test in a small subset of their treatment systems. TRI provides three days of consultation to each state, providing assistance in deciding how to purse that policy project, describing promising approaches tried by other states or suggested by the research literature, and helping the state design a practical improvement and evaluation protocol. 

The third component of MAPS consists of legislative briefings. Each member of MAPS, on
request, receives one legislative briefing during the year on a subject related to the policy project being implemented in the state.

     TRI's preferences for the small group, mutual assistance model is explained by several factors: 

• Practices, policies and procedures have a higher likelihood of success when derived from
  common experience rather than purely from academic research.
• Findings from a consortium of states may have greater political traction than the same
  findings from a single state effort. Such a consortium may provide the critical mass to conduct
  pilot studies, rapidly and affordably, in a relatively small number of treatment programs in each
  state.
• Small group forums are ideal environments for members to work on multiple issues
  simultaneously.
• Findings from the consortium can add significantly to the evidence base and be shared on a
  national basis through publication in a variety of reports and journal papers.

For more information about MAPS or related projects, contact Olivia Stroia at ostroia@tresearch.org. To learn more about joining MAPS, contact Mady Chalk, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Policy Research and Analysis at mchalk@tresearch.org