_{Rutgers Youth Behavioral Health Initiative Funding Opportunities}

The mission of University Behavioral Health Care (UBHC) is clear: to provide evidence-based and compassionate behavioral health services, while also advancing the field through programmatic research and the education of both current and future behavioral healthcare professionals. UBHC offers a comprehensive array of behavioral health services across New Jersey that cater to youth, adolescents, and their families. These services span all levels of care, encompassing inpatient, outpatient, and community-based programs, as well as integrated physical and behavioral health services.

As a vital component of the Rutgers Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, the Brandt Behavioral Health Treatment Center and Retreat marks a significant expansion in our capacity to provide compassionate care to youth and adolescents ages 15-25. Gifts to the Rutgers Youth Behavioral Health Initiative through UBHC will help Rutgers deliver the pinnacle of clinical care and cultivate a robust interprofessional team of behavioral health professionals at the Brandt Center and beyond. Philanthropic support is crucial to our ability to:

• offer experiential and advanced educational opportunities such as psychology internships and psychiatry fellowships
• develop and implement innovative youth mental health treatment programs
• recruit behavioral health faculty researchers, staff, and clinicians
• implement technology resources and upgrades
• provide resources for supplemental and recreational activities promoting youth, adolescent, and young adult wellbeing.

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The threefold mission of the Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology (GSAPP)—education, research/scholarship, and public service—is embodied in the Rutgers Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. In particular, the Center for Youth Social Emotional Wellness  (CYSEW) within GSAPP, which works to address the significant mental health inequities among young people that exist in New Jersey and nationally, focuses on these three areas in partnership with the Brandt Center.

Opportunities to support the Rutgers Youth Behavioral Health Initiative through GSAPP and CYSEW include:

• Postdoctoral Fellowships
  • It takes two years after graduate training for a student to gain the research training, publication record, and grant support necessary to obtain a faculty position and start an independent research career. Without this training, some of the most innovative students never get the opportunity to develop and test new treatments. Named postdoctoral fellowships provide behavioral health-focused postdoctoral scholars dedicated time to develop their own research agenda while receiving intensive mentoring and support. CYSEW and the Brandt Center leadership will collaborate to nationally recruit top applicants and match fellows with the top researchers at Rutgers in their area of interest for mentorship.
• Graduate Fellows in Community Mental Health
  • GSAPP’s psychologist training programs, which are ranked as some of the top in the nation, are training students dedicated to providing behavioral health services in the New Jersey community. The number one concern for students receiving this training is debt associated with their education. Graduate fellows in community mental health will receive cross-disciplinary training, learning how to implement a holistic set of evidence-based therapies in the community. These students will learn state-of-the-art treatments and receive intensive support and mentoring. They will have the opportunity to train in several top community and hospital settings as well as at the Brandt Center.

• Annual Youth Mental Health Equity Summit
  • Rutgers is working to take the lead in the state to help community agencies and schools come together, to break out of silos and to improve access and continuity of care in the state. RYBHI and CYSEW host a yearly youth mental health equity summit to bring together local community-based clinicians, schools, youth, and state-level organizations with Rutgers faculty, clinicians, and administrators to discuss the most pressing issues surrounding mental health equity. In this way, Rutgers provides the structure for the New Jersey community to come together to develop and implement a coordinated behavioral health strategic plan. To facilitate the development and implementation of innovative new ideas, CYSEW offers grant funding to groups who meet at the summit and want to establish a partnership. CYSEW also works with groups who receive funding to write larger grant proposals to sustain their efforts.

• Youth Mental Health Speaker Series
  • The Brandt Center and CYSEW are rich sources of expert, evidence-based information about youth, adolescent, and emerging adult mental health, and as part of the state’s flagship public university, have a commitment to share their knowledge with the community and contribute to solving the most complex challenges of our day. To this end, RYBHI and CYSEW are seeking support to implement a speaker series targeted to clinicians and family caregivers that will address high prevalence mental health topics. This support will allow Rutgers to rapidly expand training opportunities delivered to the community; to bring in speakers who are on the cutting edge of their areas of expertise in the field of youth behavioral health; and to promote the series broadly and provide equitable access, ensuring the center’s ability to offer these programs at no cost for community clinicians and families.

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