Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program - Project Overview: Seattle University’s Achieving Optimal Childhood, Adolescence and Young Adulthood (A-OCAY): An Integrated, Holistic, and Community-Engaged Model for Interprofessional Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training in the Evergreen State project, an interprofessional collaboration between MSW, MACFT, and PMHNP programs, aims to increase the supply of a diverse behavioral health workforce by strengthening university-community partnerships to increase of new and expanded community partnerships with experiential training sites in high-need and high-demand areas, by promoting interprofessional training and system integration, by recruiting/placing trainees interested in working with children, adolescents, and young adults, and by recruiting/expanding clinical supervisors’ capacity to support and mentor trainees. Measurable Objectives: 1. Recruit, place, monitor, and provide stipends to 48 behavioral health (MSW, MACFT, PMHNP) trainees in experiential training sites; 2. Enhance didactic and experiential training activities that develop trainee competencies in behavioral health and its integration into primary care, school settings, and other sub-specialty care for the development and implementation of interprofessional training through the Interprofessional Behavioral Health Training Curriculum (which comprises 11 training modules and the Trainee Interprofessional Learning Community); 3. Create and enhance current evidence-based interprofessional training for faculty and field site supervisors supporting trainees through the Collaborative Conversation Communities and the 11 training modules; 4. Incorporate technology integration within the training modules (tele-behavioral health services, digital health literacy) and asynchronous and hybrid training modalities; 5. Establish relationships with 12 new community-based partners to assist students with job placement after graduation; 6. Collect National Provider Identifier numbers from all trainees before the end of the training year; 7. Provide continuous quality improvement for program evaluation and at completion of the period of performance; and 8. Collaborate regularly with other grant recipients of the BHWET Pro to leverage resources and enhance interprofessional training opportunities and amplify students’ success stories. The A-OCAY project will be accomplished by the team of three collaborating program directors and faculty from MSW, MACFT, PMHNP with expertise in community-based mental health care, mental health care in primary settings, trauma-informed care with children, adolescents, and young adults. All three collaborating programs have proven history of educating/training and placing/monitoring trainees in experiential training in high need and high demand areas. We seek funding preference (Qualification #1) based on our high rate for placing graduates in practice settings that have a principal focus on serving residents of medically underserved community and funding priority 1 for demonstrating the ability to train psychology, psychiatry, and social work professionals to work in integrated care settings.
