(PS5-B44) La Academia: An Evidence-based Culturally Responsive Professional Training Curriculum Aimed at Addressing Current Training Gaps in Latine Mental Health

Recent directions in psychology point to the increasing importance of employing culturally responsive approaches to reduce treatment disparities among minoritized populations. Despite this growing awareness, current graduate training curricula are currently limited in their capacity to adequately prepare early-career professionals to serve minoritized communities. These limitations only expand as we focus further on what is needed to address the specific needs of growing communities such as Latines in the US. 

At our community Latine mental health clinic in North Carolina, we have witnessed the impacts of culturally responsive training gaps first-hand when attempting to address the growing needs of our Latine clients. Over our 18-year history, we have repeatedly encountered so-called “professional pipeline” issues whereby early-career clinicians that are both bilingual and have specific training in evidence-based Latine mental health approaches are difficult to find. The resulting dynamic is often one where new clinicians are often overwhelmed by complex caseloads that increase burnout rates, decrease service quality, and maintain current mental health disparities among Latines. 

In light of these issues, our clinic took an evidence-based pedagogical approach to developing a curriculum, “La Academia” [The Academy] (LA), aimed at reducing extant training gaps among early-career practitioners to improve client service provision quality. LA consists of over 75 hours of learning activities during a new clinician’s first year that function seamlessly alongside existing client care responsibilities to provide scaffolded professional development opportunities. Leveraging both evidence-based Latine mental health approaches and empirically validated treatment adaptations, the curriculum balances didactic teaching sessions with experiential and collaborative learning opportunities (e.g., collaborative case consultations, live session observations) that provide space for integration and practical application of the skills and knowledge being taught. The LA curriculum covers treatment of a wide range of diagnoses typically seen by our clinic by providing participants with practical diagnostic overviews and intervention tools along with cultural considerations for assessment and treatment outlined by evidence-based models of care for working with Latines.

This poster provides an overview of the evidence-based pedagogical approaches taken to develop the training curriculum as well as a mixed methods report of our evaluation of LA. Results show that the 17 participating clinicians experienced a range of multifaceted positive impacts, including increased culturally responsive knowledge and skills, improved clinician confidence, reductions in self-reported burnout ratings, as well as increased workplace belongingness and job satisfaction. It is our hope that the La Academia curriculum can serve as a model for future like-minded efforts aimed at addressing current training gaps that will improve service delivery and reduce disparities in mental health service provision for the Latine community.