Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program - The purpose of this training grant is to expand and strengthen integrated behavioral and mental health training for psychologists-in-training committed to working with adolescents and young adults in high need and high demand areas at the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center (MSAHC). The MSAHC is the home of the Division of Adolescent Medicine of the Department of Pediatrics of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City (NYC). Established in 1968, the MSAHC in East Harlem NYC has since grown into a nationally and internationally recognized model for integrated primary care, behavioral and mental health, sexual and reproductive health, health education, nutrition, optical, and legal services for adolescents and young adults. The MSAHC provides high-quality, comprehensive, integrated, confidential adolescent and young adult-centered health care to more than 8,600 young people ages 10-26 each year. All services are provided under one roof, at no cost to patients. Our mission is to break down racial, social, and economic barriers to health care, health, and well-being for young people by providing vital services-high quality, comprehensive, integrated, confidential, and at no cost to them-for all who come to us. We provide these services to promote equity and within the frameworks of racial, social, economic, and sexual and reproductive justice. The MSAHC advances adolescent health as a national imperative by serving as a leading center of clinical care, specialized training, and innovative research. The MSAHC will accomplish the goals of this training award by strengthening and expanding our existing psychology training program-consisting of an APA-accredited pre-doctoral clinical psychology internship and post-doctoral clinical psychology fellowship-with an emphasis on team-based models of care. Program expansion will include training one additional intern each year (an increase from three to four) and one additional fellow each year (an increase from two to three) and expanding our experiential training sites to include four of our MSAHC-run school-based health centers serving middle and high schools in Manhattan. We will additionally strengthen clinical supervision with a focus on training faculty and staff in additional equity- and trauma-focused modalities. Project support will additionally enable us to restart our psychology externship program. While externs will not receive stipend support, we will prepare our trainees to supervise the next generation of trainees, providing our interns with opportunities to supervise and mentor psychology externs as our program grows. The training program will explicitly address unmet needs for accessible, trauma-informed culturally responsive, equity-focused mental health services. While the MSAHC provides care to all youth who walk through our doors, our model is tailored for young people who are particularly vulnerable and experience significant barriers to care. Our patient population is 94% youth of color. Forty-four percent (44%) are Latine, 32% are Black, 14% are Multiracial (mostly Black and Latine), 6% are White, 4% are Asian, and 0.1% are Native American. Fifteen percent (15%) are immigrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, and approximately 98% are low income. Most live in communities that have experienced significant disinvestment and are negatively impacted by the social determinants of health, with resulting disparities and inequities. Many are uninsured or underinsured. As a result, our patients confront difficult challenges; approximately 70% have chronic, complex trauma from violence at home and in the community, sexual abuse and exploitation, human trafficking, and other trauma. The MSAHC is applying under Funding Preference 1 and will demonstrate a high rate for placing pre-doctoral intern graduates in practice settings that have a principal focus of serving residents of medically underserved communities.
