The provision of high-quality, accessible, safe, and timely healthcare services improves the wellbeing of individuals and communities. However, despite efforts to improve public health outcomes, disparities in access remain a significant challenge that requires immediate redress. Economically disadvantaged areas and underserving populations and communities continue to report worse outcomes, especially in behavioral health. A failure to address this portion of the population means that the gains that have been made so far are insignificant. Similarly, poor outcomes among members of underserving communities widen the healthcare disparity gap while increasing overall costs. Thus, there is a need for interprofessional collaboration to ensure the right mix of skills and competencies to integrate behavioral health in primary care settings.
The integration of behavioral health while addressing the unique needs of children, adolescents, and youth in underserved communities is the ideal approach. The integration would allow for early intervention, which would, in turn, improve clinical outcomes. However, for this integration to be possible, it is crucial to establish the main objective that this intervention would achieve. Following a careful analysis of the needs of underserving populations, the main objective should be to create a blend between public health, social work, and nursing. While these three fields focus on different aspects of communities, they promote their social and clinical wellbeing. Notably, the focus would be on forming an interdisciplinary team of diverse and highly-trained nurse practitioners and social workers knowledgeable in behavioral health. This collaboration is ideal, considering that the members would possess varied competencies, skills, and knowledge, which will help provide practical solutions.
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Diverse populations present unique challenges to the public health sector, considering that they have varied needs that the mainstream facilities may not capture. Notably, there is a diversity of beliefs, values, and perceptions regarding health, family, and other social wellbeing aspects (Nair & Adetayo, 2019). These differences may affect the delivery of public health services unless there is a contextualization of the population’s cultural underpinnings and expectations. The inclusion of social workers in the integrated approach would help in sealing this gap since they possess requisite skills that allow them to understand the needs of diverse populations. A collaboration of nurse practitioners and social workers with different skills and training means that they view patients from different perspectives. Vadic et al. (2020) assert that this form of interprofessional collaboration paves the way for a 360-degree assessment of the patient. Consequently, a blend between social work, nursing, and public health becomes a strategic approach that would help address all the behavioral health issues in underserving and high-demand populations.
Working in an integrated behavioral health setting that focuses on members from diverse communities may be demanding, considering that they present with varied issues and expectations. Thus, the people who would be designing and implementing strategies to address the unique needs must be experienced enough to handle diversity. I have gained enough experience through the various internship programs that I have undertaken in the last few years. Notably, I have worked in community-based daycare, pre-K kindergarten, and early intervention population settings based in economically disadvantaged communities. Similarly, I have worked with parolees and adolescents, an undertaking that has allowed me to understand and factor in their behavioral health needs. The experience and skills that I have gained so far will contribute to improved outcomes. However, it is impossible to reach a wider audience alone; thus, I need to work with culturally intelligent and like-minded individuals who possess requisite competencies and skills. Essentially, the individuals keen on working on this project must be willing to adopt perspectives aligned with those of target communities. I believe that it is possible to build a workforce of public health, nursing, and social work practitioners committed to delivering equitable mental health services to underserved communities.
References
Nair, L., & Adetayo, O. A. (2019). Cultural competence and ethnic diversity in healthcare. Global Open, 7 (5), 22-41. https://doi.org/10.1097/GOX.0000000000002219
Tadic, V., Ashcroft, R., Brown, J. B., & Dahrouge, S. (2020). The role of social workers in interprofessional primary healthcare teams. Healthcare Policy, 16 (1), 27–42. https://doi.org/10.12927/hcpol.2020.26292
