Our Aim
To improve health inequities specific to the African American community by creating a pipeline of educated, trained, and licensed African American mental health professionals in the state of Minnesota. We endeavor to support African Americans with educational funding, mentorship/coaching, licensure testing support, training opportunities, and employment acquisition that will create a workforce of highly skilled, healthy, culturally grounded, mental health professionals prepared and excited to serve and meet the needs of African Americans across the state.
The Problem
Health disparities that exist in the state of Minnesota regarding African American residents is largely due to systemic barriers. These barriers and disparities fall along racial lines and show up in all racially disaggregated data for the state from education, to raising children, to wealth, to wellbeing. African American residents in Minnesota fair worse than others locally and often nationally in spite of the state being a national leader according to aggregate data (e.g. top for education and raising children in the nation according aggregate state data. Worst in the nation for education and raising Black children). As it pertains to wellbeing, African Americans have a recorded history of receiving misdiagnosis, overdiagnosis, being assigned more stigmatizing diagnoses, and are typically underserved. These disparities are mainly attributed to lack of (African American) provider diversity resulting in poor access to culturally responsive care and biased clinical reports.
The Opportunity
In the past 10-years insights regarding the benefits of diversity and culturally responsive services has become talked about more by leadership within organizations. Currently, the state has a gap in health disparities within the African American community. This gap provides an opportunity to address a need by strategically diversifying the mental health field through recruitment, mentoring, employment, supervision, and retention of African American providers. Collaterally, this initiative will expand and increase Black owned businesses and help promote Black ecosystems.
Vulnerability Factors
In the past four years the state of Minnesota was struck with a global pandemic following the murder of George Floyd and civil unrest. These recent events had and continue to have extreme disproportionate negative impact on the African American community specific to wellbeing. Data has identified the Black community as a disproportionately impacted group, yet federal appointed funds (American Rescue Plan) have not been disaggregated to address impacts and disparities intentionally and specifically within the African American community. As a result, the overall wellbeing of Black residents continues to diminish due to unmet service needs including mental health support.
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 89% of mental health professionals in the state identify as White, while 3% identify as African American. This number further decreases when adding the intersectionality of Black and Male identifying mental health providers. With a significant increase in mental health demand due to societal stressors and communities deserving culturally specific services and service providers mental health professionals are overwhelmed particularly African American providers. The need to cultivate more diversity among mental health professionals is obvious. And the demand to have a process for recruiting, mentoring, training, and retaining future African American providers is paramount to addressing Black wellness inequities in the state.
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 89% of mental health professionals in the state identify as White, while 3% identify as African American. This number further decreases when adding the intersectionality of Black and Male identifying mental health providers. With a significant increase in mental health demand due to societal stressors and communities deserving culturally specific services and service providers mental health professionals are overwhelmed particularly African American providers. The need to cultivate more diversity among mental health professionals is obvious. And the demand to have a process for recruiting, mentoring, training, and retaining future African American providers is paramount to addressing Black wellness inequities in the state.