Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program - The Empowering Northern Michigan: Behavioral Education in Diverse Rural Communities (EMN) project will increase the supply of a diverse behavioral health workforce who are trained to provide integrated behavioral health care and committed to work in high-need and high-demand areas. The overarching goal of the work plan is to establish an MSW fellowship program that improves the overall mental health of high needs and underserved communities in Northern Michigan. The project will accomplish this by leveraging the existing successes of the Ferris MSW program with additional resources focused on enhancing, expanding, and formalizing key elements of its partnerships, training models, recruitment, and clinical supervisory network capacity. In its partnerships, the project will seek to expand community relationships with high-impact agencies in rural communities by resourcing evidenced-based enhancements in didactic and experiential training activities that emphasize team-based and integrated care, as well as technology integration and telehealth. As an institution both embedded and invested in the success of high-need and high-demand areas, with a proven record of attracting and training students who share a commitment to those areas based on their own array of lived experiences, Ferris State is uniquely positioned to respond to the programmatic purpose of the BHWET program. To support students and their ability to sustainably bring their talents and skills to communities in need, the project seeks to address financial barriers through ENM stipends, alleviating both barriers to participation in the program and to long-term financial hardship in the form of debt accrual. The ENM Fellowship will prepare an equivalent of 52 full-time advanced standing Clinical Social Work students, 13 per year for four years, in a targeted group of high-impact agencies across underserved rural communities throughout the northern half of the State of Michigan, ranging from Isabella to Benzie County. The program will reinforce 1. trauma informed care for underserved populations, 2. interprofessional and team-based training and experiences, and 3. the unique resources of Ferris State University in location, experiential learning, remote technology, and anti-racist pedagogy in internship settings focused on school social work, domestic violence treatment, LGBTQ+ services, medical social work, mental health, and substance use disorder treatment. Ferris State University is requesting funding priority under Priority 1 due to the ongoing work and planned partnership in the ENM project by the University's Interprofessional Education (IPE) committee, which has trained more than 150 MSW students in the past three years. The University is also requesting funding preference under Qualification 1. 74.3% of MSW graduates in the past two years were placed in practice settings serving in medically underserved communities (MUCs), predominantly in rural HPSAs.
