Several East Tennessee State University faculty are working to grow the behavioral health workforce in Northeast Tennessee to better meet the mental health care needs of the region. The efforts are thanks to two grants totaling $3.7 million from the Bureau of Health Workforce within the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
Drs. Rachel Miller-Slough, Aubrey Dueweke and Alyson Chroust of the ETSU Department of Psychology received $1.3 million to bolster training for the department’s clinical psychology doctoral students, particularly in treating substance use.
The second grant of $2.4 million was awarded to Drs. Jodi Polaha and Matthew Tolliver, director and assistant director, respectively, of the Institute for Integrated Behavioral Health in ETSU’s Quillen College of Medicine. This grant will help them continue to train and retain graduate students in psychology, counseling, social work and psychiatric nursing, with a focus on the mental health needs of children, adolescents and transition-age youth.
A great need for care
These efforts are much needed in the Southern Appalachian region and Tennessee, according to the grant recipients.
“This area of rural Appalachia is medically underserved, with a shortage of behavioral health providers,” said Miller-Slough, associate professor of psychology.
Polaha added that the need for care in the region is significant. In addition to high rates of depression and suicide, and ongoing challenges with drug addiction, Tennessee routinely ranks among the worst in the U.S. for preventable deaths due to chronic health conditions like heart disease and diabetes. Those conditions can improve with health coaching and lifestyle support by a trained behavioral health provider.
Training interdisciplinary providers
Polaha noted that most people do not seek out mental health services regarding stressors, but instead, they speak to their primary care doctor about these concerns.
“Integrating behavioral health into primary care makes it easier to access,” she said. “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.”
ETSU’s doctoral program in clinical psychology trains psychologists to work in interdisciplinary teams in integrated care settings and for practice in rural regions, said Dueweke, assistant professor of psychology.
Their students do experiential externship placements in the community as providers-in-training, some of which are through the Institute for Integrated Behavioral Health, where the students are embedded in primary care and other integrated settings.
“The hope with this grant is that we can expand those externship placements to more rural, underserved counties in Northeast Tennessee that currently don’t have a lot of mental health providers,” Miller-Slough said. “We want to make long-lasting partnerships for these community placements going forward.”
Dueweke added that the Department of Psychology’s HRSA grant will also enable faculty to strengthen the program’s existing curriculum around managing substance use to better meet community needs.
The grant received by the Institute for Integrated Behavioral Health is a continuation of a previous four-year grant to train students in various mental health professions. In the first four years, the project exceeded its original goal of 48 students and ultimately trained more than 60, many of whom remain here as mental health providers.
“We are really excited to get another four-year grant,” Polaha said. “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.”
Tolliver noted that the Institute grant also includes a focus on bolstering students’ skills in working with children, adolescents and young adults. “It’s about equipping trainees with skills to work as part of a health care team, to partner with families, and to provide care that helps improve well-being for the youth in our region,” he said.
Breaking barriers, retaining professionals
With this grant funding, the faculty hope to attract more students to behavioral health disciplines and address the barriers to pursuing graduate degrees by offering competitive stipends and other benefits.
“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,” said Dueweke.
Polaha said retention of the professionals trained using this grant funding is important, whether they are from Northeast Tennessee or beyond.
“We’re thinking more strategically about who’s already in this region that could be inspired to do this work, and how we can get them to stay,” she said. “Our project looks beyond the training to the permanent positions, and works on making connections with the health care industry and others. We’re expanding beyond our College of Medicine and College of Nursing clinics. For example, we have placements at Healing Hands in Bristol, a non-profit clinic in Sevierville and the Washington County Detention Center.”
