Graduate Psychology Education Programs - William James College strives to be a preeminent school of psychology that integrates rigorous academic instruction with extensive field education and close attention to professional development. The College assumes an ongoing social responsibility to create programs that educate specialists of many disciplines to meet the evolving mental health needs of society. William James College proposes to improve the distribution of a well-trained behavioral health workforce and increase the supply of professionals with the knowledge, skills, and training to provide trauma-informed, evidence-based and culturally responsive services to children, adolescents, and young adults with mental health conditions who reside in high-need and high-demand communities. Through this project, the Clinical Psychology Department at William James College will recruit, mentor and train seven doctoral level graduate students over 3 years and prepare them to provide behavioral health services, including trauma informed care and substance use disorder prevention and treatment, in community-based primary care settings in high need and high demand areas, as well as develop health service psychology faculty. The project’s objectives will be accomplished, as follows: 1. Build a workforce of clinical psychologists who are trained to provide integrated care for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and other SUDs in high-need, high-demand communities by leveraging existing and new partnerships between the college and field sites to create sustainable training positions involving 25% or more experience in OUD/SUD prevention, evaluation, and treatment. 2. Increase integrated care capacity in the four partner community health centers while building trainee skills in tele-behavioral health strategies. 3. Create a pipeline of culturally responsive psychologists who can provide trauma-informed care for OUD/SUDs, psychiatric disorders, and behavioral health conditions in underserved communities. 4. Deliver supervision, didactic instruction, and mentorship guiding clinical psychologists in training towards successful careers in integrated care settings for SUDs. 5. Enhance partner site and WJC faculty knowledge and skills in the area of psychosocial interventions for SUDs and tele-behavioral health treatment methods. With a long and robust history of training graduate psychology students from culturally diverse backgrounds and equipping them with the knowledge and skills to practice in medically underserved communities, William James College has the organizational capacity, expertise and field training partnerships to successfully implement the proposed project and meet its overarching goals and objectives and is applying for Funding Priority 1 and for Preference Qualification 1: High Rate.
