Behavioral health is projected to be one of the fastest-growing areas in healthcare, by market value, over the next few years. Those projections may fall short, however, if provider shortages and other key obstacles aren't addressed.
Evans Rochaste, NP, founder and CEO of culturally competent behavioral health provider ReKlame Health, spoke with Becker's about how to tackle issues in behavioral health.
Editor's note: This response was lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How do we get a more equitable provider pool in psychiatry?
Evans Rochaste: We have to think about some of the structural challenges at large. Forty-four percent of African Americans say they would prefer a provider who looks like them, and when you have providers that look like the community they're serving, engagement goes up. Trust goes up.
Q: Can you give us any examples of training for cultural competency that you give your providers?
ER: Sure. For example, when a provider comes to ReKlame Health we will work through exercises in which they have an imaginary patient from an underrepresented community. We ask the provider about the barriers that patient may face, and we take them through that journey.
Language and terminology is big, too. We help our providers understand how people's backgrounds may change how they present. We make sure that our senior clinicians and our head of clinical operations are working individually with our providers to ensure those milestones are met, to empower them to have those tools to serve a diverse population.