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In honor of Minority/BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month, Healthcare Brew asked our readers for insights into how their companies, hospitals, or practices are working to eliminate barriers and ensure equitable access to mental health services.
We’ve reported extensively on how racial disparities affect healthcare and patient outcomes, as well as how health systems are trying to improve health equity. But disparities also exist in mental and behavioral health—with outcomes varying widely among different racial and ethnic groups, according to a United Health Foundation (UHF) data brief released Tuesday.
American Indian/Alaska Native children, for example, are 14x more likely than their counterparts to undergo adverse experiences, such as divorce, a parent’s death, or living with someone with mental health or substance abuse issues, the UHF brief found. Meanwhile, the report noted that other minority racial populations were more likely to experience issues like major depressive episodes, substance use disorder, and co-occurring low-to-moderate mental illnesses.
Here’s how NewYork-Presbyterian staff among Healthcare Brew’s readers, are working to address mental health care and access inequities:
The Uptown Hub: NewYork-Presbyterian, in collaboration with Columbia University Irving Medical Center and other community-based partners, established the youth opportunity hub in New York City’s Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods in 2017.
The Uptown Hub, which opened with the help of a four-year, $10.3 million grant, provides holistic and culturally affirming services to 250+ local residents—who are aged 14 to 24 and at risk for judicial system involvement—each year. NewYork-Presbyterian took over funding the program after the initial four-year grant lapsed.
The program aims to improve mental and physical health. It offers behavioral health, including individual therapy and one-on-one support, as well as clubs and workshops.
Hugh Love, a psychologist with Uptown Hub at NewYork-Presbyterian, said the program “has helped to further extend needed mental health services to adolescents and young adults, including transitional-aged youth, a group who can be difficult to engage due to a myriad of factors, particularly stigma and limited understanding and misconceptions of mental health treatment.”
“The Uptown Hub’s structure has helped to significantly improve stigmatized mindsets around seeking therapy, adding a more down-to-earth touch by embedding culturally competent and responsive mental health services/providers in a youth development program where they also receive additional psychosocial support,” he added in a statement.
Uptown Hub Program Manager Richard Lopez further stressed that the initiative’s team of advocates, who largely hail from Washington Heights and Inwood, “understand what our youth are going through, and the youth can relate to them on a personal level.”