Behavorial Health Initiative Action Team
Action Team Goal
The Recruit Behavioral Health Interns Action Team is working to enhance the region’s behavioral health pipeline by increasing the number of students who complete their internship within an organization in northwest Michigan. Because interns often become employees in the area or organization in which they intern, the team anticipates that increasing the number of behavioral health interns will result in more behavioral health providers in the region.
Targeted Problem
Many behavioral health organizations in Northwest Michigan have struggled to find and successfully recruit behavioral health interns. Field placement staff within colleges, universities and organizations across the state can find it difficult to identify a diverse range of relevant internship opportunities in this region and to find the current point of contact for these internship placements. Local organizations find it difficult to identify field placement staff to inform them of their internship opportunities and to keep track of the various requirements across different internship programs.
Our Collective Work
To address this problem, this team developed a searchable behavioral health internship directory website, convened meetings with organizational internship program coordinators and school field placement faculty, and developed newsletters for organizations and schools that include information about regional internship programs and degree program internship requirements. See below for the resources and tools developed by this team.
Understanding the Region’s Internship Needs and Capacities
The Recruit Behavioral Health Interns Team facilitated surveys in 2022 and 2024 among organizations that offer behavioral health internship opportunities to better understand the region’s needs and capacities around internships. The data from these surveys includes the barriers organizations face to accepting interns, what strategies they have found to be successful in recruiting interns, and what resources might help them to expand their capacity to accept a greater number of interns.
Developing Tools to Enhance Intern Recruitment Efforts
The Recruit Behavioral Health Interns Action Team has developed an online tool to expand the number of and the region’s capacity for interns who are the future of the region’s behavioral health workforce. The behavioral health internship directory houses information on internship programs within a variety of organizations across northwest Michigan. The site is designed for students and field placement faculty to easily find internship opportunities in the region. Organizations are also able to use the site to find contact information for schools that require their students to complete an internship. Click the box below to explore the directory.
Connecting Regional Organizations with Michigan-Based Universities
The Recruit Behavioral Health Interns Team has worked to connect Universities and organizations across the region through quarterly newsletters and by adding a “Connect with a School” page to the internship directory website. Learn more about the behavioral health internship programs that exist in northwest Michigan, the behavioral health-related internship requirements set by programs within colleges and universities, and new additions to the behavioral health internship directory by reading the Behavioral Health Internship Newsletters.
Design and Implementation Team Members
Since 2022, 6 stakeholders in the NW MI region have been engaged in the work of this Action Team.
Leader
- Alyson Kass – Munson Healthcare
Members
- Tiffany Kiper – North Country Community Mental Health
- Mindy Fernandes – The Michigan House of Representatives
- Amy Christie – North Country Community Mental Health
- Gwen Williams – Northern Michigan Health Services, Inc.
- Alissha Bibbs – District Health Department #10
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SUPPORT OUR WORK?
Use the behavioral health internship directory website, https://behavioralhealthinterns.org/, to learn more about the internship opportunities across the region, have your organization’s internship program added to the site, or connect with a school that requires their students who are studying within the behavioral health field to complete an internship.
