Increasing Interprofessional Collaboration Among School Mental Health Providers

• In Event: Breaking Silos: Using Collaboration to Improve Student Mental Health Outcomes and Create Equitable Education Systems

Abstract

Background: This paper will examine outcomes from an ongoing, statewide, research-practice school mental health (SMH) partnership. The partnership aims to increase equitable access to high-quality SMH services by amplifying the capacity of SMH providers (i.e., school counselors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers) to implement evidence-based practices (EBP). To achieve this aim, SMH professionals in high-needs school districts are invited to participate in online learning modules and group-based telementoring sessions. This presentation will investigate the impact of these activities on SMH professionals’ multicultural skills, EBP competence, and interprofessional collaboration.

Theoretical framework: Schools present an opportunity to increase mental health equity (Cummings et al., 2010). However, this opportunity is limited by the multiple barriers that high-need schools face when implementing SMH systems. Consistent with a bioecological framework, the effective implementation of evidence-based SMH services is influenced by multiple factors at the macro, school, SMH team, and individual levels (Eiraldi et al., 2015). This research aims to improve mental health equity in high-need schools by addressing barriers at the individual (e.g., lack of competence in multicultural skills and EBP) and team (e.g., misunderstanding of roles and fragmentation) levels (Markle et al., 2013). We also aim to determine how the two partnership-provided activities may differentially impact outcomes.

Methods: Participants include SMH professionals from six high-need school districts. All participants will engage in online learning modules intended to improve their capacity to provide evidence-based and culturally responsive SMH services. A subset will also take part in monthly telementoring sessions that emphasize effective collaboration across SMH professions. The groups will then be compared to answer the following questions:

When compared to participation in the online learning modules alone, is participation in the telementoring sessions associated with greater increases in:
1. participants' multicultural competence?
2. participants' EBP competence?
3. the frequency and quality of interprofessional SMH collaboration?
4. the benefits of interprofessional SMH collaboration on student mental health?

Data sources: Pre- and post-intervention, participants will complete: (1) an adapted version of the School Psychology Multicultural Competence Scale (Malone et al., 2015); (2) the Evidence-Based Practice Questionnaire (Upton & Upton, 2006); and (3) an adapted version of the Expanded School Mental Health Collaboration Instrument (Mellin et al., 2013), which measures the frequency and quality of interprofessional collaboration as well as its on student mental health outcomes.

Results: Qualitative results from the partnership’s Year 1 cohort (2020-2021; n = 59) indicated that the telementoring sessions increased interprofessional collaboration in SMH. With the Year 2 cohort, we will further investigate this finding and the impact of telementoring using quantitative methods. We hypothesize that participation in the telementoring sessions will be associated with positive changes across the four research questions.

Scholarly Significance: To increase mental health equity in schools, novel approaches are needed. This presentation will explore whether telementoring can increase the effectiveness of more traditional approaches (i.e., online learning) for improving the capacity of SMH professionals to collaborate and provide evidence-based services.

Authors

• Faith Zabek, University of Virginia

• Katy Zeanah, University of Virginia

• Michael D. Lyons, University of Virginia