UNT ICBH PROJECT

In September of 2017, a collaboration between professors (Drs. Angie Wilson, Chandra Carey, and Peggy Ceballos) in the Counseling and Higher Education Department and Department of Rehabilitation and Health Services at the University of North Texas yielded $1.2 million dollars in grant funding from the Department of Health and Human Services for the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training (BHWET) Program. The project entitled “Expanding Cultural and Linguistically Appropriate Services into Integrated Care and Behavioral Health Settings” is a four-year project designed to address health disparities by enhancing the delivery of culturally competent mental health (MH) services to Medically Underserved Communities (MUCs) in Behavioral Health (BH) and Integrated Care (IC) settings. The project leaders place special emphasis on establishing or expanding internships or field placement programs in behavioral health that include interdisciplinary training for students/interns, faculty, and field supervisors to provide quality behavioral health services to communities in need. Over the course of the grant, 80 counseling student interns will have the opportunity to participate in the project, and will receive multicultural and integrated care training. We currently have eleven sites in which students will have as internship placement sites. The sites include but are not limited to: Children’s Advocacy Center for Denton County, City of Irving, Parkland Hospital, Denton ISD, and Denton County Friends of the Family. We are increasing the number of partnership sites and will continue to do so over the course of the four year project. Project staff will help train and educate counselors in the DFW area on cultural competencies, counseling techniques, and integrative care and research the impact of the training. We look forward to impacting the DFW area by providing access to mental health care for medically underserved communities and training to professionals.