CIPC Blog

After an assessment with East Bay leadership and team members to understand the current facilitators and barriers to integrated behavioral health efforts, CIPC faculty developed a day-long workshop on integrated behavioral health.

In President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union he described a four-part Unity Agenda, and declared, “By this summer, the Federal Bureau of Prisons will ensure that each of their 122 facilities are equipped and trained to provide in-house medication-assisted treatment (MAT).”

Adult Primary Care Physician Visits Increasingly Address Mental Health Concerns

Dr. Gardiner was recognized for her work in health equity and medical group visits!

We are thrilled to follow up on the successful second annual Group Medical Visit conference held on September 16^th and co-chaired by CIPC’s primary care clinician, Paula Gardiner, MD. The conference was attended by 160 people from all over the world and there was a wide range of places represented including academic medical centers, community health centers, private practice, and the Veterans Administration.

First let me say that the PHQ-9 is a fairly good tool for screening patients and identifying those who have an unmet behavioral health need.  While I think computer adaptive testing is a better approach and the way of the future, there are still plenty of settings where a paper and pencil PHQ-9 is the best we can do.

For years employers in many sectors, including healthcare, have offered funding for continuing education as an employment “benefit.”  As healthcare increasingly focuses on quality of care, are there good reasons to think about this investment?

Late this spring the CIPC faculty read with interest a special issue of Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medicals Settings on “The Primary Care Behavioral Health Model of Integration”.  One particular article caught the attention of CIPC Director, Daniel Mullin.  The author, Adrienne A. Williams, PhD discussed in “The Next Step in Integrated Care: Universal Primary Mental Health Providers” the binary view of mental health, either a patient is mentally healthy or is mentally ill.  The author cites examples of how this view reinforces stigma associated with seeking mental health services, even within current integrated care models.

Williams suggests as a solution, a primary mental health provider, “In contrast to the binary view, where some people are seen as needing an MHP and others do not, this model would be similar to the primary care model of health and would involve development of primary mental health providers (PMHPs). These PMHPs would be to mental health care what primary care physicians (PCPs) are to physical health care.”

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Our founding director, Dr. Alexander Blount, guest blogs about his new book, "Patient-Centered Primary Care: Getting From Good to Great". 

Sandy's 1998 volume "Integrated Primary Care: The Future of Medical and Mental Health Collaboration" is one of the foundational texts of the movement to acknowledge the importance of mental health to our physical well-being and to integrate behavioral health care into primary care. Click on the post title to read his blog post explaining how the new volume is the next chapter for IBH.

Might common and widespread practices surrounding Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) actually be harming patients? Steve Martin, MD, EdM, is lead author on a paper recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that examines the evidence.  The findings in the article will form the backbone of a course that will be given to all Massachusetts medical school students.  UMass CIPC is leading the team that will build this critical training.

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