We propose to initiate a Mentorship and Educational Program (MEP) in Mental Health Services Research at the University of New Mexico (UNM). Focusing on minority mental health issues in primary care settings, this teaching institute will provide an intensive, one-week training session, which will introduce mental health services research to minority junior faculty members and graduate students. The MEP also will enhance ongoing mentorship relationships with outstanding mental health researchers who can serve as both advisers for the trainees' research and as role models in their career development. The overall aims of the MEP are to: 1) teach trainees basic research methods in this field, with an emphasis on how to write proposals and manage funded proposals; 2) introduce trainees to important recent findings of mental health services research, with special emphasis on research pertinent to minority populations of the Southwest; 3) establish networks among trainees and research mentors; 4) help trainees with various aspects of """"""""career development""""""""; 5) produce a minority-oriented mental health services research curriculum that is exportable to other educational institutions; and 6) initiate an ongoing sequence of training sessions in mental health services research on an annual basis. Targeted participants for the MEP will include the minority junior faculty members already participating in the NIMH-funded Minority Research Infrastructure Support Program (M-RISP) at UNM, other minority faculty members at UNM who would like to affiliate with the M-RISP, and minority trainees from other institutions in the Southwest region. Each participating trainee will be assigned to a mentor at UNM and/or an external mentor with whom to work during the one-week MEP session and during the following year. External faculty members, who will include outstanding minority mental health services researchers able to serve as role models, will teach at the MEP annual session for two to three days and then will act as ongoing mentors during the following year, roughly one hour every other week by phone and via face to face meetings every three to four months. UNM-based faculty will meet with local trainees on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. We expect that the MEP will develop a focus for mental health services research in New Mexico and the Southwest region and will emerge as a nationally recognized model for training of minority faculty members in mental health research at the interface with primary care.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 19 publications
