Montana’s Health Care Gets a $2.5 Million Boost From UM

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The University of Montana has received a $2.5 million grant to support behavioral health care in areas previously underserved by the state.

I spoke with UM Director of Strategic Communications Dave Kuntz about the grant from the Federal Health Resources Administration.

UM Gets a $2.5 Million Grant to Support Behavioral Health Care

“All across Montana, we've seen incredible healthcare workforce shortage gaps, and that's really been seen in the behavioral health space,” began Kuntz. “Because of that, for about eight years now, the university has been working in this very cross collaborative way to get our graduate level students outside of Missoula and into a lot of the clinical settings across the state of Montana to help fill that healthcare gap.”

UM already has a history with the grant to support behavioral health.

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This is the Third Year UM has Received a Behavioral Health Care Grant

“This grant is for the third consecutive award cycle,” he said. “So these happen in about every three to four-year periods. The university received about two and a half million dollars to continue this work to grow and produce more healthcare providers to serve Montana's children, our young adults, and especially those folks who are in rural and underserved areas across the state.”

Kuntz dug deeper to describe the meaning of ‘behavioral health’.

Behavioral Health Deals with Mental Health and Mental Health Care

“When we talk about behavioral health, its mental health and mental health care,” he said. “We get students from different disciplines and fields such as counseling psychology, nursing and social work, and get them together in these areas of need and in these clinical settings, and provide them a stipend to be able to go and do this professionally after their training here at the university is done to be able to serve these communities that often don't have a mental health or behavioral health care professional available to the residents of those communities.”

Kuntz praised UM’s rapidly growing ‘college of health’.

UM Spokesman Praises the 'Rapidly Growing' College of Health

“The University of Montana has a growing college of health that continues to spin up degree programs and opportunities like this, and they do so specifically to meet the different areas of need for the state of Montana,” he said. “We have the new occupational therapy program starting this fall, a new physicians’ assistant program starting next fall, and in continued emphasis on behavioral health care, and so when it comes to health care across the state of Montana, the University of Montana is really stepping up to meet the needs of the entire state right now.”

Kuntz said these students have the opportunity to earn training stipends to help them concentrate more of their time and energy on their education and clinical internships.