Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program - Disciplines: Psychology pre-doctoral interns, postdoctoral fellows, and MA students in mental health counseling. Requested funding amount: $ 2,399,244. Brief overview: The purpose of continuation of the previously proposed training program, Building the Pipeline of Multicultural Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Professionals (Multicultural CAP, or MCAP), is to continue preparing a new generation of interdisciplinary, trauma-informed, and culturally attuned BH professionals to undertake careers serving diverse children, adolescents and transitional-age youth (TAY) ages 3 to 25 years in mental health professional shortage areas (HPSAs). Concurrently, we intend to fill the gaps in pediatric BH services in four partnering community health centers (CHCs) with trainees whose identities and backgrounds reflect the diversity of the CHCs. Our target population consists of children, adolescents, and TAY served by the four CHCs. Trainees will include five psychology predoctoral interns, two psychology post-doctoral fellows, and two mental health counseling master’s level graduate students each year. Over four years, we will provide placements to 36 trainees who will provide 13,344 hours of on-site clinical work per year in the CHCs—equal to 6.5 FTEs. Goals. The goals of the M-CAP Program, as have been achieved in the previous iteration, will continue in a revised form to be: 1) To develop nine new year-long training positions on interdisciplinary pediatric primary care teams in four CHC; 2) To develop a multi-level, evidence-based 12-month curriculum in child, adolescent and TAY BH; 3) To recruit/match, place, and train 20 diverse pre-doctoral psychology interns, 8 psychology post-doctoral fellows, and 8 mental health counseling students over the course of four years; and 4) to devise and implement systems for ongoing program management, data collection, quarterly and annual evaluation, quality improvement and regional and national dissemination of M-CAP. How the project will be accomplished. The project was and will continue to be led by the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology at Boston Medical Center (BMC). The oldest multicultural psychology training program in the nation (52 years), CTMP has been accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA) since 1986. To date, 87% of CMTP trainees have been racial and/or ethnic minorities. Shamaila Khan, PhD, Director of the CTMP, will serve as .2 FTE Project Director. Faculty will be drawn both from CTMP and the BMC Dept. of Psychiatry. M-CAP will collaborate with the CHCs to assess their needs, design experiential placements, and ensure that the multi-level M-CAP curriculum addresses the needs of the target population. All trainees will be mentored and supervised by BMC faculty and also have on-site supervision. A .2 FTE project coordinator and .2 FTE Project evaluator will assemble a REDCap database, ensure that all data collection and reporting requirements are met, and evaluate M-CAP processes and outcomes. BMC’s telehealth platforms will continue to be used for some on-line training, mentoring /supervision, and the delivery of telehealth services. Specific measurable objectives: 1.1 No later than 3/31/2025, complete assessment of CHC integrated BH workflows and unmet BH needs; 1.2 No later than 6/30/2025, complete design of experiential placements; 2.1 No later than 5/31/2025, develop curriculum outlines; 2.2 No later than 8/31/2025, finalize multi-level curriculum; 3.1 No later than 9/1/2025, place first cohort of nine BH trainees in CHCs; 3.2 No later than 8/31/2029, complete four iterations of M-CAP Program; 4.1 No later than 9/1/25, implement systems for data collection, program management and quality improvement.4.2 No later than 9/1/25, implement quarterly and annual evaluations of M-CAP Program; 4.3 No later than 8/31/29, disseminate M-CAP Program through professional associations, national conferences and scholarly publications. Funding priority: Yes.
