Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program - Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services, on behalf of the West Michigan Behavioral Health Workforce and Education Training Consortium (West Michigan BHWET) with two universities, is applying to the HRSA Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program for Professionals to address serious professional shortages and improve child and adolescent access to care in West Michigan, a fourteen-county region encompassing multiple rural and underserved areas with the West MI BHWET Child and Adolescent Training Track (CATT). Academic Consortium Members and their accredited programs include: the Pine Rest Pre-Doctoral Psychology Program accredited by APA; the Pine Rest Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program accredited by ACGME; Michigan State University and the University of Michigan Master of Social Work Programs accredited by CSWE, and Central Michigan University Master’s in Counseling and Psychology Programs accredited by CACREP. Michigan’s mental health provider shortage is severe, a condition that carries into West Michigan. According to Michigan behavioral health workforce data, all behavioral health occupations fell in the bottom half of the healthcare workforce index, based on low growth, significant shortages, wage gaps and high turnover. In West Michigan, behavioral health workforce turnover rates are very high, up to 46% turnover for school social workers and 57% for mental health and substance use social workers. These gaps are compounded by high need. Over one in seven youth (14%) in Michigan need behavioral health services but do not receive them and for Michigan youth with two or more adverse childhood experiences, this figure increases to almost one in five (18%) not accessing services. Many Michigan parents report difficulty obtaining care for their children, with over one third (34.6%) reporting some difficulty, and almost one fifth (18.5%) finding it very difficult to obtain services. Rurality and low-income are contributing factors in West Michigan intensifying access issues. Eleven West MI counties are HRSA-defined as rural grant eligible and Kent County- at the geographical center of the proposed BHWET project, is partially rural and contains Grand Rapids, one of MI largest cities with high-density low-income and disinvested communities. Primary care provider availability ratios in some counties spike from 3,320:1 to 12,310:1. West Michigan also carries higher percentages of low income than at the state level, where families with children in West Michigan experience low income up to 26-47% compared to 14.4% at the state level. Through their accredited programs, the West Michigan BHWET Consortium will build regional capacity and offer an interprofessional, integrated behavioral health Child and Adolescent Training Track for psychiatry, pre-doctoral psychology, social work and other master-level learners who are in their last year of training. The West MI BHWET Child and Adolescent Training Track (CATT) will bring psychiatry fellows, pre-doctoral psychology students, and social work students together to co-receive didactics including an interdisciplinary seminar series, case conferencing, specialty trauma and eating disorder training, and experiential field training to increase the availability of highly trained providers for clinical positions serving underserved populations after program completion. A clinical supervisor cadre (licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers) will be cultivated through the Consortium who are dedicated to, have worked with, and may be from underserved communities in West Michigan, who will receive their own specialty training in trauma and eating disorders to build this capacity in the students they supervise. This project will allow the West MI BHWET Consortium to establish a training hub that is a logical access point for expansion as the program evolves beyond the project period of performance. Applying for Funding Priority 1 and Funding Preferenc
