Eve Adams, a professor in New Mexico State University’s College of Education, has received a $900,000 grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration that will help increase and improve behavioral health services in medically underserved communities.
Adams is a professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology. She said the overall goal of the project is to increase the number of trainees in counseling psychology who have been taught how to engage in interprofessional collaboration with mental health counseling, nursing, social work, pharmacy and family medicine trainees in order to provide culturally sensitive, integrative primary care services in a medically underserved community.
The project is titled “Graduate Psychology Education Program: Integrated Primary Care Behavioral Health Training on the U.S.- Mexico Border.”
The expansion will include a pre-doctoral intern from the NMSU Counseling Center in addition to six counseling psychology doctoral students in the Counseling Psychology academic program per year, for a total of 21 counseling psychology trainees over a three-year period. The total number of trainees involved across all of the healthcare professions will be 147.
“We have received funding from the GPE program for 11 years and we are delighted to receive three more years of funding,” Adams said. “With this funding we are able to hire more supervisors for our doctoral students who are providing much-needed behavioral health services at La Clinica de Familia and the Family Medicine Center at Memorial Medical.”
Adams said counseling psychology doctoral students will learn how to work in interprofessional teams with family medicine and pharmacy residents, nursing doctoral students and masters students in public health, social work and counseling in order to provide integrated healthcare.
“In addition, we can continue our Spanish counseling supervision and training for our bilingual students,” Adams said.
The Interprofessional Immersion component of the grant took place July 5-8. The grant’s co-principal investigator Daubney Harper, a college assistant professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, has implemented most of the grant-related curriculum and provided much of the on-site supervision.
“I’m elated that the funding from HRSA will continue to support our program,” Harper said. “Psychologists can be an instrumental part in healthcare and it’s imperative that they are trained alongside other healthcare professionals in order to provide the best possible patient care.”
Information from NMSU