The grants come from the Bureau of Health Workforce within the Health Resources and Services Administration and were awarded to teams within the Department of Psychology and the Quillen College of Medicine’s Institute for Integrated Behavioral Health.
Two grants from the Bureau of Health Workforce within the Health Resources and Services Administration were recently granted to teams at East Tennessee State University to bolster the accessibility and quality of the region’s mental and behavioral health services. The grants total $3.7 million, with $1.3 million awarded to a team from the university’s Department of Psychology and $2.4 million awarded to the Quillen College of Medicine’s Institute for Integrated Behavioral Health.
The grant awarded to the Department of Psychology was given to the team of Dr. Rachel Miller-Slough, Dr. Aubrey Dueweke, and Dr. Alyson Chroust to help train clinical psychology doctoral students in substance use treatments. The grant awarded to the Quillen College of Medicine’s Institute for Integrated Behavioral Health was given to the team of Dr. Jodi Polaha and Dr. Matthew Tolliver to assist in training graduate students in psychology, counseling, social work, and psychiatric nursing.
According to an article on East Tennessee State University’s website, Dr. Miller-Slough, who is an associate professor of psychology, explained why this work is important in this region in particular. She is quoted as saying, “This area of rural Appalachia is medically underserved, with a shortage of behavioral health providers.”
The goal of the work being done within both of these projects is to help integrate behavioral and mental healthcare into whole-body healthcare. The state of Tennessee has high rates of depression, suicide, and substance abuse, as well as high rates of preventable diseases like heart disease and diabetes.
Dr. Polaha points out that many people in the region do not seek out specific mental healthcare, but rather speak with their primary care physicians about their issues. This is why the projects seek to help integrate behavioral and mental healthcare into primary and physical healthcare, to help individuals seek the help they need from healthcare providers who are equipped to assist in all of these aspects.
Dr. Polaha said, “Integrating behavioral health into primary care makes it easier to access. We want to stop separating mental health from overall health, and address whole person health. Your stress has an impact on your physical well-being, and vice versa. We’re really trying to change the way people get their services, and even how they think about it, so there’s less stigma associated with it.”
East Tennessee State University doctoral program in clinical psychology already seeks to place students in rural settings and in interdisciplinary teams in integrated care settings. The grant that the Department of Psychology received will allow faculty to expand the work it is doing to prepare students better for working with substance use patients and those with behavioral and mental health challenges, like enhancing the current curriculum, and by offering benefits like stipends to attract more students to the program.
Dr. Dueke said, “It’s exciting that we’re able to offer a more competitive and comfortable training experience for these trainees so they can really devote more of their focus to their studies.”
The grant received by the Institute for Integrated Behavioral Health is a continuation of a previous grant award that was utilized to train students to work in mental health professions. During the first four-year grant period, the program was successful, having trained more than 60 students while the goal amount was 48. The next four years of funding will allow faculty to work to train even more students for the work.
Dr. Polaha said, “We are really excited to get another four-year grant. In addition to psychology, we’ve got social work, counseling and psychiatric nurse practitioner students, who are working their way through classwork and need to go out into the field for clinical hours as part of their degree programs. We train them in the most evidence-based and best practice approaches that we think will truly help the people of Northeast Tennessee. We try to help them feel connected to this place, and find them great careers so they will want to stay.”
For more information about East Tennessee State University, visit the school’s website.