Graduate Psychology Education Programs - Native Americans experience lower health status than other Americans. Inadequate education, economic adversity and poverty, cultural differences, historical and generational trauma, and discrimination in health service delivery contribute to a disproportionate disease burden and lower life expectancy (IHS, 2019). In Arizona, Native Americans have a median age at death that is almost 15 years younger than the Arizona median (ADHS, 2021). This is due, in part, to lack of access to behavioral healthcare. Despite having the highest (or among the highest) rates of tobacco use, heavy and binge alcohol use, illicit drug use, substance use disorder, mental illness, co-occurring mental and substance use disorders, and suicide attempts as compared to other racial/ethnic groups (SAMHSA, 2024), only 29% of Native Americans who needed substance use treatment received it, and only 39% of those needing mental health treatment received services from 2021 to 2023 (SAMHSA, 2024). The Arizona Psychology Training Consortium (APTC) will increase Native American access to behavioral health services by building on an existing HRSA-funded program to train doctoral health service psychology students in integrated, interdisciplinary behavioral health, with significant focus on trauma-informed care and opioid and other substance use disorder prevention and treatment services for children, adolescents, and adults. The APTC is a collaboration between the ASU Clinical Psychology, ASU Counseling Psychology, and UA Clinical Psychology programs, with additional collaboration from ASU’s Behavioral Health, Addiction, Social Work, and Nursing programs, as well a Native American consultant with expertise in improving health and wellness of Indigenous People. Our training program provides an interdisciplinary, didactic training curriculum infused with a Native American perspective and cultural considerations. Trainings are provided to graduate psychology students and faculty, graduate students and faculty from the collaborating programs, and community providers. Further, the APTC will leverage telehealth services, with training support from the HRSA-funded Southwest Telehealth Resource Center (SWTRC), to virtually place trainees in integrated health programs at two community-based, primary-care experiential training sites located on Tribal lands. Graduate Psychology trainees will provide behavioral health consultations and substance use disorder treatment within an integrated team, under supervision by licensed psychologists. Students will also provide services out of the ASU Clinical Psychology Center, for Native Americans rescued from predatory sober living houses. The goal of the training program is to improve access to quality behavioral healthcare for Native Americans by increasing the number of highly-trained Health Service Psychologists committed to working in high need and high demand areas. The current proposal builds on the existing training program by adding the University of Arizona Clinical Psychology program to the consortium, expanding the training curriculum to more comprehensively cover trauma-informed care and prevention science, broadening developmental training to include children and adolescents, and adding a new Native American experiential training site. We are requesting a funding priority and a funding preference. Our current training program will have trained 11 doctoral health service psychology students to work in integrated care settings by the end of this academic year. Two students have graduated, and both are working in integrated health settings, one in a VA and one in a community healthcare center, both of which are in medically underserved communities.
