HHS awards University of Tennessee grant to provide mental health care to rural areas

The University of Tennessee’s College of Nursing has been awarded a $3.7 million grant from HHS to provide mental health care services to rural communities with underrepresented and minority populations.

The university’s Mobile Health Training: Underrepresented Providers & Underrepresented Populations project offers full scholarships to students in certain programs. The selected students, from underrepresented communities, will provide telehealth services to five counties in the area through mobile health care clinics once a week.

“This project will help to strengthen diversity within the nursing field,” Mary Johnson, a clinical assistant professor at the college of nursing, said in a press release from the university. “It not only provides funding to increase the number of diverse and underrepresented students in the [Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioners] program, but it will also help address the mental health needs of rural communities of Tennessee.”

The grant is being awarded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of HHS.

According to the release, another aspect of the project will be to integrate social determinants of health, health equity and access to care, health literacy, culturally sensitive care, leadership and communication concepts into the current educational curriculum, to improve patient outcomes.

“The prevalence of mental health disorders is highest among those living in Appalachian regions of Tennessee,” Allyson Neal, DNP, assistant dean of graduate programs at the university, said in the release. “This fact coupled with limited services for rural residents creates health disparities. This grant will impact the lives of rural Tennessee residents by bringing them care and by training [psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners] to overcome the challenges unique to this population.”