Hogg Foundation for Mental Health

Martinez, Guzmán Teach Federally Funded Doctoral Course on Integrated Health Care for Underserved Families

December 16, 2010

By Brandon Curl

Dr. Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., executive director of the Hogg Foundation, and Hogg Foundation fellow Dr. Michele R. Guzmán are helping teach a doctoral course on integrated health care in the Department of Educational Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. Guzmán also is a faculty member of the department.

Martinez_class “Integrated health care refers to various health care professionals working together in a single setting to permit treatment of mental and physical problems in a coordinated manner,” said Dr. Cindy Carlson, department chair. “The major goal of this course is to improve training of Spanish-speaking and ethnic minority students to better address the mental health needs of underserved children and families in Central Texas.”

Carlson invited Martinez and Guzmán to be co-instructors for the course.

“The integration of behavioral health and physical health is crucial to the development and implementation of a culturally and linguistically responsive, equitable health care system,” said Martinez. “One key component to achieving this goal is a multidisciplinary curriculum that prepares our future health care providers with the tools to treat individuals with dignity, with compassion and with evidence-based practices. This will help break down the walls of stigma and eliminate health care disparities.”

“Connecting cultural competence and integrated health care is a pressing need in the field right now,” Guzmán said. “Sometimes we are not able to see the way that our own cultural worldview and experiences impact the way we serve others, through the language we use or even the interventions we think are helpful.”

Funding for the course was provided by a three-year, $369,000 grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration to address a severe shortage of bilingual and ethnic minority child psychologists.