Behavioral Health Alliance Charter

The Behavioral Health Alliance (BHA) of the University of Alaska (UA) statewide system is formed to accomplish the following purpose and plans:

Purpose

BHA is a cross-campus University of Alaska interdisciplinary task group has been formed to identify issues concerning behavioral health programs in the UA system and to work collaboratively to enhance communication, coordination and collaboration between and within academic disciplines. Participants will include deans, directors, and faculty from all three University of Alaska campuses.

Alliance members believe there is a need for the University to respond as one orginazation to industry regarding plans for behavioral health professional education. They believe that there should be a coordinated approach to industry to solicit feedback and help prioritize programs for development. The Alliance will serve that purpose.

Operating Principles

• The Alliance will strive to achieve curricular consistency across campuses when possible and preferable, and to provide as much instruction as feasible in a distance-delivered mode.
• The Alliance needs faculty input. A faculty member from each campus will be included in the  group.
• All campuses will support the Alliance with travel funds for meetings as possible.
• The Alliance will invite industry partners, both general and discipline specific, to work on needs  assessment, prioritization, and program development.
• The Alliance will provide a forum for faculty to dialogue across campuses regarding behavioral health and related programs.

Goals:

1.  Group development across behavioral health-oriented degree programs
   1. Conduct 3 face to face BHA meetings yearly with participants from Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau, and Sitka. Meetings to be held in Fairbanks and Anchorage.
   2. Support task groups regarding priority topics; distance delivery, integration of culture, datasharing, faculty development, and practicum/internship coordination.
   3. Provide updates and facilitate communications with the 26 alliance member programs.
2. External communications
   1. Complete, update, and maintain a website of behavioral health programs across MAUs.
   2. Prepare and disseminate information updates to external stakeholders regarding BHA activities.

   3. Develop or strengthen UA behavioral health workforce development relationships with the Alaska Mental Health Trust workforce development workgroup.
   4. Disseminate information about BHA and secure feedback from the field through conference presentations.

3. Intra-UA communications
   1. Link BHA activities with student recruitment efforts
   2. Prepare and disseminate information updates to internal stakeholders regarding BHA activities.

Plans

• Finalize the inventory for external audiences.
• Document capacity, using career pathway diagrams where applicable.
• Identify and address additional gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies.
• Collect, discuss, and publicize successful collaborations, models and experiences.
• Develop a bulleted list of general factoids to introduce the work of the Alliance.
• Develop an internal marketing plan.
• Solicit input from industry regarding needs, priorities, and programs.
• Collaborate with faculty in common core departments to strengthen distance delivery of programs.
• Prepare an integrated comprehensive plan.
• Solicit funding to achieve the plan.

Accomplishments

• Collaboration with behavioral health providers to identify priority educational and training needs in children's mental health for practitioners in Alaska.
• Coordinating effors to incorporate children's mental health and systems of care content into university-wide curriculum.
• Integrating cross-cultural knowledge and understanding across behavioral health disciplines.
• Creating better alignment of internship and federal state Barrier Crimes legislation.
• Building capacity for effective distance education in behavioral health programs.