Nicholson Grant To Help Rutgers Develop New Training Paradigm for Future Healthcare Workforce

The Nicholson Foundation has awarded Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care (UBHC) a $1,500,000 grant to help fundamentally transform medical and behavioral health education and training across the University. UBHC will bring together stakeholders from the physical health, mental health, and addiction health sectors at Rutgers University to collaboratively develop a new training paradigm that prepares students to work in environments in which both behavioral healthcare and physical healthcare are delivered simultaneously. 

The grant will result in a major shift in the way the future healthcare workforce will provide care, both in New Jersey and beyond. Although behavioral health has been traditionally separated from the physical healthcare delivery system, decades of research and clinical consensus has reinforced that integrated approaches treating the “whole person” produce better outcomes for individuals while lowering total costs to the system.

Led by UBHC, this project will bring together eight Rutgers schools that train emerging health professionals. These schools include Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers School of Nursing, the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, Rutgers School of Social Work, and Rutgers School of Health Professions.

The $1,500,000 grant from The Nicholson Foundation will provide the funding for UBHC to conduct a curriculum analysis across all eight schools and create the infrastructure needed to develop and sustain the transformed training paradigm. The goal of the project is that all participating Rutgers health professions clinical units will be ready at the end of the two-year grant period to deliver training in integrated care delivery, both in classroom lessons and in-the-field pre-professional training – bringing about a future in which healthcare is conceived of, taught, mastered, and delivered from an integrated perspective.

Learn More

Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care