Thirty percent more African American, Latinx, and Hispanic faculty are working this year within the College of Public Health and Health Professions (PHHP) at the University of Florida (UF), thanks to a $1 million initiative to recruit faculty who address diverse research and instruction.
In 2019, PHHP had 12 under-represented educators from these groups, among 152 faculty members.
As protests erupted and social justice movements advanced in the U.S. following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Michael Perri, PhD, dean emeritus of PHHP, says the college took stock of their efforts regarding diversity. They found that over the past decade the composition of faculty had become more diverse in terms of individuals of Asian descent, but the number of African American, Hispanic, and Latinx faculty had remained the same. As one way to address this, the college decided to advance more research and instruction on topics related to diversity and inclusion within health care.— but that plan required additional funding.
With the help of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, an innovative strategy emerged. PHHP identified financial accounts where the money could be pulled from indirect grant dollars. Each faculty member receives some of these funds within their Research Reserve Account, typically used for hiring research staff and to cover administrative costs. Those who had the funding agreed to a one-time “tax” of 5 percent that they would allot for the project. Together, they raised $300,000.
The college also allocated 10 percent of the total indirect funds it had received from UF, another $300,000. An additional $325,000 was reallocated from the college’s Practice Plan reserve account, which is funded by a tax placed on income from clinical services provided by PHHP to support new initiatives. Lastly, Perri contributed $75,000 from his own indirect reserve account.
(Photo courtesy of Alexandra Rodriguez/UF Health)
Collectively, they raised $1 million, with $300,000 serving as recurring funds that were used to hire educators who could address critical gaps in research and instruction from African American, Latinx, and Hispanic perspectives.
PHHP also developed a 12-step plan for hiring and retaining faculty, which included designing job search criteria for diversity in research and instruction, connecting underrepresented applicants with diverse faculty members already on campus, and creating a supportive environment for faculty from underrepresented groups.
As a result of the program, PHHP now offers five new courses: “Health Disparities,” “Ecology of HIV in the Rural South,” “Community Assessment and Partnerships,” “Building Resilience,” and “Psychological, Behavioral, and Social Issues in Public Health.”
In addition, grant-funded research by the new faculty members is focused on improving the mental health of underrepresented COVID-19 survivors, community-based and trauma-informed curriculum, and HIV outcomes for Black men.
The new hires also engaged with students in existing campus-wide diversity projects and initiated their own, Perri says. One such project, Our Community, Our Health, aimed to increase vaccinations in communities of color. As of July 2022, across 36 states for which a total vaccination rate could be calculated by race and ethnicity, 64 percent of White people had received at least one COVID-19 dose compared to 59 percent of Black people, according to research by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. To address this disparity locally, the new faculty worked with PHHP students to design murals that encourage getting vaccinated and administered vaccinations through mobile van outreach.
The work accomplished by these new faculty members is important both for the university and for the health care industry, Perri says.
“The courses they teach or the research that they’re conducting is directly related to health disparities and understanding [associated] social determinants and … how to make changes to the ways that we do things [within health care],” he says.
Not only is the college committed to increasing diversity both in faculty and student composition at UF, but the students are too, Perri says.
“[The students] also pushed us and said, ‘Why can’t we do more?’”●
Nikki Brahm is a senior staff writer for INSIGHT Into Diversity.
This article was published in our December 2022 issue.
![One day after the mass shooting incident at Michigan State University in February, a University of Florida (UF) student called the UF Police Department (UFPD) concerned about a classmate who was researching guns and ammunition. Instead of just police responding to the call, a trained behavioral health specialist was also dispatched. “Our clinicians and officers spent three hours with that person to really flesh out why he was searching what he was searching,” says Meggen Sixbey, PhD, assistant director of the Behavioral Services Division of UFPD and a co-responder. “Do we have evidence to be concerned? In those three hours with him, they learned that he was in fear of his own safety [due to] things that were going on in his own life.” Without UF’s co-responder approach, Sixbey says, the situation could have escalated quickly or ended differently, and the student may not have received appropriate help. Due to widespread concern around mental health and fears of escalation caused by law enforcement response, partnerships between police and behavioral health specialists are growing across higher education campuses. Experts see this collaboration as a way to aid the most vulnerable by connecting them with needed resources and support. Collaborations differ campus to campus based on institutional needs. While some new programs, like the one at UF, dispatch counselors directly to the scene with police officers, others do not involve immediate on-site clinician response to dispatch situations. The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, for example, works with both municipal and campus police to provide mental health support services to students, all of whom live off campus. University case managers help officers on the scene when there is no perceived imminent danger. Additional support is provided by the Campus Assessment, Response & Evaluation (CARE) Team, which is a common type of program at colleges and universities. The goal is to reach students before their situation becomes critical. The CARE Team reviews referrals for urgent mental health support among students and connects them to campus resources such as case management and additional counseling services. When assessing a threat, each situation is evaluated based on the NABITA Risk Rubric, a tool used in triaging mental health concerns with an interdisciplinary team approach, says Jan Gascoigne, PhD, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, and associate clinical professor. “Often the situation is determined not to be a threat but really just someone who is struggling and needs help,” she says. “We’d rather try to work with that person, figure out what’s going on, and get them the help they need without having to escalate to a police intervention. Our campus police have the same philosophy.” New programs expand mental health services in dispatch situations, with projects being introduced at Johns Hopkins University, The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Oregon, Colorado State University, and California State University, Long Beach. During a six-month trial in the city of Denver, in which mental health specialists were paired with police to respond to calls involving trespassing and other nonviolent events, a 34 percent drop in crimes was reported, or approximately 1,400 fewer criminal offenses, according to the Stanford University report “A Community Response Approach to Mental Health and Substance Abuse Crises Reduced Crime,” published last year. UF’s program launched in July and is the first in the nation led by a campus police department, Sixbey says. Calls are answered by UFPD, which contacts clinicians when there is a mental health component. Situations might include, for example, a student who threatens suicide, someone who was just fired from their job, or an individual whose property was stolen. It’s essential to decriminalize mental health, or mitigate criminal offenses in such calls, Sixbey says. It’s also important to de-escalate situations with clinically trained professionals to help reduce hospitalizations, which are often traumatic, she says. The UF team is looking for more effective ways to enhance efforts to assist underrepresented individuals because the relationship between these communities and law enforcement has historically been strained, a circumstance highlighted by recent social justice activism and political attention paid to policing. In addition to a campus climate survey, UF is conducting focus groups to see how underrepresented communities on campus view the program. Preliminary feedback points to possible changes in police uniforms, where officers would wear a pin or patch to identify themselves as Crisis Intervention Team trained, which means they have received mental health instruction to guide interactions. Individuals surveyed also showed interest in making the clinician the lead responder instead of an officer. This model was used successfully a couple of months ago, Sixbey says. A faculty member of color called regarding a Black student who made a concerning statement about suicide and left the classroom abruptly. The caller didn’t want police to go to the student’s home because they were aware he had experienced past interactions with law enforcement, but the caller still felt a wellness check was warranted. Based on the information provided, the clinician was able to strategize and lead the interaction. They found that the fears the instructor had regarding the student’s mental health were not present and that he was thankful for the tailored response. “Why a program like this is so beneficial, especially to underrepresented populations, is simply because it provides an additional resource which is an alternative to law enforcement response,” Sixbey says. “Even the best law enforcement officer with an abundance of mental health and crisis intervention team training is still an officer. When you can bring a mental health worker to the scene, it can shift the dynamic and allow for a noncriminal approach to a noncriminal matter.”](https://www.insightintodiversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Crisis-Response-1-218x150.png "Counselor-Police Response Partnerships Benefit Students in Crisis")
