For the fiscal year (FY) 2023 Minority Fellowship Program, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Centers for Mental Health Services (CMHS), Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), and Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) are taking applications.
The MFP helps to fill in those gaps and teaches mental health workers more about how to prevent, treat, and help people in recovery from mental illness and drug/alcohol addiction in racial and ethnic minority groups.
Purpose
The goal of this programme is to find, train, and help master’s and graduate students who want to work in mental health care fields.
Educating mental and/or substance use disorder behavioural health professionals about how to help people from racial and ethnic minority groups who have a mental or substance use disorder avoid problems, get care, and get better;
Increasing the amount of professionals who teach, run services, do research, and provide direct mental and/or substance use disorder services to racial and ethnic minority groups who are also culturally competent; and
Improving the level of services for preventing and treating mental and drug use disorders in racial and ethnic minority groups.
Information about money
- Estimated amount of money available: $15,742,904
8 prizes are likely to be given.
Each award could be worth up to $1,967,863 per year.
Project Period Length: Up to 5 years.
Needed Things to Do
Required tasks are the things that must be done as part of a cooperative agreement. Your application’s Project Narrative must describe them.
Recipients will be expected to use the money mostly to improve infrastructure and train specialists in behavioural health care. They will do this by giving stipends to professionals with master’s or doctoral degrees who are studying in one of eight fields at colleges and universities across the U.S.
Find and use strategies for recruitment and outreach to find, help, and pay master’s and doctoral students from different backgrounds who are committed to improving the mental health of racial and ethnic minority groups. Recipients must use recruitment strategies to get people from different master’s and doctoral programmes across the U.S. to join the project. This would include recruiting people from underrepresented groups, such as racial and ethnic minority groups.
These students will come from the following fields: psychiatry, psychology, social work, marriage and family therapy, nursing, mental health counseling, substance use and addictions counseling, and addiction medicine.
SAMHSA believes that each winner will help at least 40 Fellows each year. There will only be one award for each of the above fields. If an applicant wants to talk about more than one field, they must send in a separate application.
Set up a committee for each field to offer advice and consultation, as well as help with programme planning, monitoring, and evaluation.
The group must meet at least once every three months, and professionals in the field as well as people who use mental health care and their families must be on it.
READ ALSO: Apply For Halcyon Climate Resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean Intensive Fellowship Program
Work together and build ties with accredited baccalaureate and postbaccalaureate schools all over the U.S. to find people who want to help racial and ethnic minority groups with mental illness and/or substance use disorders.
Create a national network of workers working in the chosen specialty field who can act as mentors for the fellows and help them out.
Develop and put into action a plan for keeping track of and keeping an eye on the following: Fellows’ academic progress; Fellows’ successful finishing of an internship in the chosen specialty field.
Activities That Can Be Done
Make a programme called “behavioral health workforce pathways” that helps high school, community college, and vocational/technical trade school students from racial and ethnic minorities learn about job and career opportunities and training paths in behavioural health and spreads the word about them.
This programme would help people find ways to build their careers and resumes, such as through training programs, mentorship, internships, study opportunities, and job shadowing. Lastly, the programme will make promotional materials and related papers, keep them up to date, and give them away for free. (e.g., program brochures, training announcements).
READ ALSO: How To Apply and Qualify For Re:Constitution Fellowships 2023/2024
Develop and put into action a tracking and monitoring plan that takes into account the following: Fellows’ requirement to work for two years in areas that offer mental health and drug use services to underserved racial and ethnic minorities. Grantees can ask that each fellow’s employer verify that the two-year rule has been met.
Work together with SAMHSA programmes and federal partners (e.g., HRSA, National Health Services Corps, SAMHSA’s Primary and Behavioral Health Care Integration Technical Assistance (TA) Center, SAMHSA’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Center for Excellence in Behavioral Health (HBCU CFE), SAMHSA’s Technology Transfer Centers (TTCs), SAMHSA’s National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Child, Youth, and Family Mental Health, SAMHSA’s Office of Behavioral Health.
Encourage students in schools of behavioural health to specialise in areas where there are often shortages of workers in underserved minority communities, such as treatment for people with serious mental illness or serious emotional disturbance, child/adolescent, geriatric, women’s, refugee and migrant mental health and substance use services, mental health and substance use services for minority communities in inner cities and rural areas, and services or treatment for people with serious mental illness or serious emotional disturbance.
Partner with organisations that work to reduce harm to help with the overdose crisis and make it easier for people with drug use disorders to get help.
Criteria for eligibility
Public or private non-profit professional organisations that represent professionals in the fields of psychiatry, nursing, social work, psychology, marriage and family therapy, mental health counseling, substance use disorder and addictions counseling, and addiction medicine.
These groups will help pay for training after a bachelor’s degree, including training for master’s and graduate degrees. These organisations have the tools and databases to find potential Fellows, as well as the facilities and knowledge to carry out the programme’s tasks. Because of this, these groups are the only ones who can run the MFP programme.
SAMHSA will only give out one award in each of the eight areas. An entity can offer to work in more than one area, but it will need to fill out a separate application for each area. Someone or something could win more than one award. For each of the eight categories, the award will go to the application with the highest score.
Visit Grants.gov to find out more.
READ ALSO: How To Easily Apply For Nasser Fellowship for International Leadership “Batch 4”