Friday, May 9, 2025
5/9/2025
Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending - Non-Construction - UMKC Partnership for Rural Behavioral Health Workforce Education, Training, and Initiatives The Project Director is Michael Wacker, PhD (email: wackerm@umkc.edu; address: 2411 Holmes St. Kansas City, MO; phone: 816-235-6069). This proposal fulfills the congressional approved directive that the funds be used “to develop and expand experiential training opportunities to improve access to high quality behavioral health services to underserved areas, such as rural and low-income communities in northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas. The program will expand behavioral health medical training opportunities through UMKC’s School of Medicine – St. Joseph campus” There is a critical shortage of behavioral health care coverage throughout the states of Missouri and Kansas as well as many areas of the United States. This shortage is even more apparent in rural and tribal areas. This allocation was provided to UMKC School of Medicine to help address this critical shortage. For this allocation, the School of Medicine will partner with key collaborators within the UMKC Physician Assistant Program, master’s in social work, master’s in counseling, Kansas City Indian Center, tribal areas of Northeast Kansas, University Health, and Mosaic Health System. Together, these partners will provide additional training programs to recruit and educate behavioral health students and clinicians practice in rural and tribal areas. The objectives of this allocation specifically involve: increasing the number of rotation sites and clinicians at rotation sites, increasing the number of medical, physician assistant, social work, and counseling students, trainees, and interns at rural sites, incentivizing students in behavioral health pathways to seek rural opportunities via scholarships, providing rural community telehealth sites and equipment for tribal areas, providing behavioral health educational opportunities in rural communities, providing transportation for rural behavioral health needs, and creating rural and tribal specific behavioral health curriculum. The School of Medicine was founded in 1971with emphasis on early clinical experiences, small group learning communities centered around a physician mentor, primary care experiences, integration of basic sciences, humanities, behavioral health, and clinical medicine, and addressing the physician shortage of Missouri. The UMKC School of Medicine Kansas City campus is located in the Health Sciences District that is home to or in proximity to numerous hospital affiliates (including University Health, St. Luke’s Hospital, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Missouri Department of Mental Health, as well as UMKC Schools of Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Nursing). The School of Medicine intentionally expanded medical student enrollment in 2020 to increase the number of physicians practicing in rural parts of Missouri to address a critical void and reduce healthcare shortages. In 2020, a UMKC SOM regional campus was started in St. Joseph, Missouri in collaboration with Mosaic Life Care. Mosaic has one of the largest private rural primary care networks in the nation and is the only tertiary care hospital between Kansas City and Omaha. Together, UMKC and its partners are well positioned to critically improve on behavioral health training needs in rural areas of the region.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).