Washington State has a tremendous shortage of skilled behavioral health care professionals such as psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed clinical social workers and licensed counselors. With seed funding from the UW and in collaboration with the UW School of Social Work, the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the departments of Psychology and Computer Science & Engineering, we have been developing a Behavioral Health Support Specialist (BHHS) credential / certificate that would allow students to provide evidence-based psychological interventions in primary care and mental health specialty care settings under supervision of a licensed clinical psychologist or psychiatrist. Over the past three years, Patricia Areán, PhD, Anna Ratzliff, MD, PhD, Patrick Raue, PhD, and Brenna Renn, PhD, have led an effort to develop and tested an innovative undergraduate course in evidence-based psychotherapy that teaches clinical skills such as cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, behavioral activation and problem solving treatment. Eighteen undergraduate students studying psychology and/or social work have participated in this class thus far.

We intend to build on this foundational work by engaging with Washington State policy makers and colleges throughout the state to scale up an evidence-based BHSS program over the next five years. This would create an exceptional opportunity for more than 100,000 undergraduate students in Washington State colleges who major in such fields as psychology, help us dramatically increase the behavioral health workforce in Washington State, and could serve as a model for undergraduate training programs throughout the US. We have secured some initial philanthropic funding for this exciting new effort and look forward to providing more updates in the coming months.