UNT BTIIC Project

UNT Integrated Care and Behavioral Health Project

In September of 2017, a collaboration between professors (Drs. Angie Cartwright, 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: 1) students/interns, 2) faculty, and 3) 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. Our overall goals are to:

• Increase the number of students who are qualified to work as Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs) in integrated behavioral health settings. • Increase the diversity of the professional counseling workforce and their capacity to adequately serve underserved and vulnerable populations. • Solidify partnerships between UNT-CHE-RHS and internship site partners in the DFW Metroplex service area that offer high-quality didactic and experiential training. • Increase involvement of families and support systems in the prevention and maintenance of mental health recovery through community outreach.

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