Design for the National Evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program on Chronic Mental Illness

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation chose the University of Maryland Mental Health Policy Studies Program to conduct an independent national evaluation of its Program on Chronic Mental illness, a large-scale demonstration in which nine cities across the country are participating. The national evaluation aims at describing the implementation of the program and assessing its impact on clients. The evaluation effort comprises five groups of interrelated studies: a site-level study, a community care study, housing studies, financing studies, and disability and vocational rehabilitation studies. Taken together, the components of the evaluation should provide evidence that will help create new structures and processes in large cities for delivering care to persons with chronic mental illness.