Correctional Health

Commonwealth Medicine works directly with criminal justice agencies to provide health care, mental health, and substance abuse services for inmates. We also facilitate the development of relationships between criminal justice agencies and the state and federal health care, mental health, and public health systems that serve inmates.

Our Health and Criminal Justice Programs offer health care management resources that maintain inmate health. This helps prevent the spread of infectious disease in prison systems and in the general population.

With an academic approach to correctional health care management, we develop initiatives to promote best practices for cost-effective service delivery. Our health and criminal justice programs focus on the following:

• Interagency collaboration
• Education for health care workers and inmates
• Clinical research
• Pharmacy support

We provide a wide range of prison health services, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Specialized administrative plans for coordinating and assessing health care delivery
• Direct clinical care
• Formulary management
• Drug utilization review

Correctional Health Conference

We created the Academic and Health Policy Conference on Correctional Health Conference, as a way to emphasize the importance of connecting academic research and correctional health policy. This conference showcases the research on practices that produce the best results in correctional health settings.

University collaboration

As the health care consulting division of UMass Medical School, we have close relationships with our colleagues in other departments. We tap into their expertise to improve our correctional health care services.

On an ongoing basis, we develop academic programs in correctional medicine in conjunction with our Medical School colleagues in multiple disciplines:

• UMass Graduate School of Nursing
• Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at UMass Medical School
• Research centers within UMass Medical School, including the Department of Psychiatry and the Center for Mental Health Services and Research

Our Health and Criminal Justice Programs partner with other Commonwealth Medicine programs to ensure that the inmate population is served by the full range of our expertise:

• Federal reimbursement financing
• Disability benefit training for correctional staff
• Clinical pharmacy guideline development
• Health provider education
• Program analysis and intervention strategies