BHECN-ARPA News

News regarding the BHECN-ARPA Awards Project -- Dec. 6, 2023

We're thrilled you've chosen to read our first BHECN-ARPA newsletter! Our goal is to highlight the amazing work our awardees accomplish to improve the behavioral health workforce in Nebraska. We also want to create a forum for awardees to share important information like job openings and supervision opportunities.

In each newsletter, we will feature one BHECN-ARPA project and hear directly from the awardees about how project activities are progressing.

Our first awardee profile will feature Project REST, which is being conducted at the Grace Abbott Training and Supervision Academy at Grace Abbot School of Social Work at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Below Principal Investigator Susan Reay, EdD, LICSW, (pictured right) tells us more about the project, which received funding in the Behavioral Health Workforce COVID-19 Projects category.

Dr. Reay, describe your project for us.

Project REST (Reflect and Explore in Supervision Training) is a partnership with BHECN and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center of Children, Families, and the Law, to provide support to clinicians supervising provisionally licensed behavioral health providers. The support includes training in facilitating attuned interactions as part of the Reflective Practice Supervision model, which is proven to reduce burnout, stress and trauma from COVID-19. The supervisor participants in our project attend three days of training and individual mentoring sessions over the course of eight months. The overall goal is to build a network of skilled supervisors across the state who have support and education to grow the next generation of clinicians. Project REST educates the supervisors and indirectly impacts their supervisees by integrating healthy methods of managing the secondary stress and trauma associated with the work. In addition to the Project REST programming, supervisor participants receive a stipend for participation.

What made you want to pursue this project?

We wanted to provide Reflective Practice Supervision for a long time because it is a practical, evidence-based approach that practitioners need, but we never had capacity. The BHECN-ARPA grant provided us the opportunity to integrate it in a way we would not have otherwise.

What do you find most exciting about the project?

It is particularly rewarding to connect practitioners across the state. The practitioners are experts in the field so providing them a venue to talk about best practices, provide support to each other, while increasing their access to new tools is particularly rewarding. The special community created due to this project has long-lasting implications. Working across the UNO, UNMC, and UNL campuses on this project is an additional bonus of this grant. However, the highlight of the project is getting to know the community supervisors across the state. The expertise, vast experience, and dedication of the supervisor participants is inspiring.

What do you see as the biggest barrier to success for the project?

While not really a barrier, but a reality, is finding time to get the entire cohort together, given two different time zones, differing work hours and family life. However, our supervisors are amazing and so are the Project REST trainers at UNL. People make time for the things that are important to them, and Project REST is proving to be a valuable opportunity in people’s lives. The biggest barrier to Project REST is not having the capacity to serve more participants. We have more supervisors who want to participate than resources to support them. 

What learnings have you gleaned from the project so far? 

We need more spaces for professional collaboration! We have a very dedicated group of exceptional clinical providers, but the work is hard and ongoing. It is apparent that we need something in place when the grant ends so the support can continue. Project REST is one of the many BHECN awardees moving the dial on behavioral health workforce development. We appreciate the opportunity to participate.

Pictured below are Katie Robbins Case, LICSW, Project REST Coordinator and Sharilyn Tuttle, Project REST Graduate Assistant.

The National Academy of Sciences has launched a survey to explore factors that incentivize or disincentivize behavioral health care provider participation in Medicare, Medicaid, and Marketplace programs, with special attention to provider type (e.g., physician, psychologist, advanced practice nurse, social worker, counselor).

They would like input from a wide range of providers in order to propose strategies to address current challenges.

Learn more about the survey on the project page and take the survey here.

A slide deck with an overview and other materials from the Oct. 19 BHECN-ARPA Virtual Networking event can be downloaded here.

They also are are available at the ARPA Awardees Blog.

Keep an eye out for an announcement regarding the next virtual networking event for awardees! 

In this section, we'll highlight media stories and other items that feature the work of BHECN ARPA-Awardees.

BHECN-APRA project the focus of education session at national conference

The Health Center Association of Nebraska (HCAN) and the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center (gpTRAC) led an education session about their ARPA-funded program at the National Association of Community Health Center’s 2023 PCA/HCCN Conference in Louisville, Ky., in November.

Jenna Thomsen, HCAN’s Director of Strategy and Development, and Dr. Jonathan Neufeld, gpTRAC’s Program Director, presented on program, “Nebraska FQHC Telebehavioral Health Network: Expanding Access through a Statewide Consortium.” (Thomsen and Dr. Neufeld are pictured above.)

The goal of the Nebraska FQHC Telebehavioral Health Network is to enhance access to behavioral health services in rural Nebraska through a shared off-site, multi-disciplinary team of telebehavioral health staff and providers. 

Learn more about HCAN here.

ARPA featured in BHECN Legislative Report

The ARPA program and several awardees were featured in BHECN's recent legislative report. The story starts on page 11 of the report, which BHECN submits to the Nebraska Legislature every other year.



Contact our Communications Coordinator Chuck Brown at chubrown@unmc.edu if your project gets covered in local media or other outlets and we'll make sure to share your story here!