Pioneering Pathways: Growing the Behavioral Health Workforce – Wellbeing Wednesdays

Pioneering Pathways: Growing the Behavioral Health Workforce – Wellbeing Wednesdays

What if addiction care wasn’t just about treatment, but about transforming entire lives? Would you mind telling us a little bit about Hazel and Betty Ford Foundation? Yes. Hazel and Betty Ford Foundation is one of the largest nonprofits specializing in substance use and mental health in the country. We’ve been the standard bearer for the field for 76 years. We’ve built recovery communities everywhere across the country. From emergency rooms to graduate schools, Dr. Joseph Lee’s story is about changing what’s possible for patients and providers. Can you tell me a little bit more about where your passion comes from? Even though I was just in training, I represented everything about Johns Hopkins Hospital. So I took that role incredibly seriously. And so what I tell the people at Hazel and Betty Ford, you all represent the best of our 76 years. And so that’s what I call an ambassadorship culture. We really see ourselves not as a treatment organization, but as a social reform movement. Hazelden’s graduate school now opens doors to people from all walks of life through conventional means or by providing alternative pathways. The second population we thought about were people in recovery. People who lost some years of their lives because of up and down journeys and now they may be working as a tech or they may be working as a driver or they may be working as a volunteer. How do we give those groups of people the opportunity to transform their lives within one generation so they can make a difference? That’s why I’m so excited that uh National Council and Hazelton are going to be launching a new partnership. Discover how recovery and transformative educational experiences come together to build a stronger future for all of us on this episode of Well-Being Wednesdays. Welcome to this episode of Well-Being Wednesday. My name is Chuck Engolia and I’m the president and CEO of the National Council. Today I’m joined by Dr. Joseph Lee, the CEO of the Hazelton Betty Ford Foundation. Dr. Lee is an addiction psychiatrist who specializes in treating children and adolescence. Joe, thank you for being with me today. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah. So maybe for the audience, would you mind telling us a little bit about Hazelton Betty Ford Foundation? Yes. Hazel and Betty Ford Foundation is one of the largest nonprofits specializing in substance use and mental health in the country. Uh we’ve been the standard bearer for the field for 76 years. Our mission started on a farm in Minnesota in 1949 in a time when no one really accepted addiction as a medical condition. And uh we’ve been going strong. We’ve built recovery communities everywhere across the country. And as you know, Mrs. Ford and her legacy really amplified everything we did. She allowed millions of people across the country with breast cancer and addiction to be seen for the very first time when she spoke about her journey. Yeah. So, how many states are you in? We’re in nine different states, but we also have partnerships with Integress Hospital in Oklahoma and uh Emery Hospital in Atlanta. We have a partnership with the Addiction Alliance of Georgia over there. So, we do a lot of different kinds of work. And people don’t realize that we have more than just a treatment arm. We actually have a digital publishing arm, a consultation arm, family and children services, a research arm, and a graduate school. Yeah. Well, that’s great. That’s a great leadin because today we want to talk a little bit about uh the workforce crisis uh confronting our field. And I know this is a topic that you’re really passionate about. Do you tell me a little bit more about where your passion comes from? Yes, my passion comes from what I call an ambassadorship culture. Uh when I was a fellow, child psychiatry fellow in inner city Baltimore at Johns Hopkins, I used to uh go out there in the field, go to these schools, work with parents and social workers to address the needs of the young people there. And I realized that even though I was just in training, as far as those people were concerned, I was John’s Hopkins Hospital. I represented everything about John’s Hopkins Hospital. So I took that role incredibly seriously. And so what I tell the people at Hazelton Betty Ford on our front line is you all represent the best of us to the world. You all as far as the patients or the people you’re interacting with represent the best of our 76 years. And so that’s what I call an ambassadorship culture. And that means that you have to prioritize your frontline team members and invest in them. And so of course workforce issues are top of mind for me all the time. Yeah. Um, and what attracted you to get into this field? Well, I I’m not in recovery myself. Yeah. But I had a really transformative experience uh when I was at Duke University doing my residency. And uh I used to see these patients in emergency rooms. And when you work only in emergency rooms as a psychiatrist, you understand the stigma that comes with addiction. People come in with law enforcement. Sometimes they’re very um belligerent or abrasive because they’re intoxicated. And that’s the view you get. That’s what you think of addiction and that’s what you also think of mental health cuz you only see people in crisis. And then I had opportunities uh later on in my rotation to do some uh treatment experiences and I got to see some of the very same people I had seen in the emergency room on the other side and uh it really spoke to me. It was really kind of this humanistic journey. It’s what all doctors I think want. They want to see that kind of transformation in people. So, I kept it in mind when I was at John’s Hopkins and then uh went to Hazeldon to get my addiction certification and I’ve been really compelled and inspired by the mission since. And if I remember correctly from the conversations we’ve had before that uh did you had some kind of fellowship or something that got you to Hazelton? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh I’m an immigrant. I grew up in Oklahoma. Uh you know, my mom was a housekeeper, you know, growing up. My my father was uh studying for his masters and his PhD. And so, we didn’t have a lot. And so, um, when I was doing residency, I knew I was on the clock. You know, my my family needed me. And so, I needed to go, uh, make some money. And so, I remember, uh, at the tail end of my fellowship at Johns Hopkins, my office mate, uh, went to, I think, Mass General to do an addiction fellowship. And I just didn’t have that opportunity. I had to go, you know, start working. And so, at that time, it was just Hazelden. It was before the Betty Ford merger. um places like Hazelton offered a clinical track where I then I could sit for at the addiction medicine boards and so that’s how I got to Hazelton. That’s great. Well, and I I imagine you know we’re going to talk a little bit about you know kind of solving the workforce crisis. You mentioned you have a graduate school and I’m thinking that your experience has helped shape how you’ve kind of approached uh the work of the graduate school in ways to try to uh get people into the field. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yes. I think there’s something that’s really important, you know, backing up from the graduate school. The reason we have all these business units that I mentioned like publishing and whatnot is not necessarily because of business purpose. We did it because we really see ourselves not as a treatment organization but as a social reform movement. And in order to change hearts, we had to get into advocacy and policy and publishing and this the field needed standards and family and children needed help and we needed more counselors and we needed to professionalize the field. So that’s the why. when you then look at our graduate school and and why we do the things that we do, um I saw an opportunity to really provide a pipeline uh and to give people a unique opportunity within a generation to change their lives, give back and make a difference. So, uh we already had an incredible graduate school and by the way, 37% of our counselors come from 37 of your employ 37% of our frontline counselors come from our graduate school. And and that’s that’s a message I want to send to other people because that’s an incredible uh supply chain of talent that becomes a flywheel. It sharpens your training, sharpens your rigor. Um but Kevin Doyle, who who deserves a lot of credit, the CEO of the graduate school and I did a lot of brainstorming and we saw a tremendous opportunity in the grad school to build a pipeline for our next generation of uh frontline clinicians. And I I understand right you’ve done some really creative things like alternative pathways because not everyone has the same means or academic background. So I’m also intrigued by the way that you’ve thought you know kind of how to get a more diverse diverse very broadly group of people into the field. Yeah. So Kevin one day says to me uh Joe did you know that technically speaking you don’t have to have a bachelor’s degree to get a master’s degree? I was like what? Yeah. Most of us wouldn’t think of that. Okay, I didn’t think of that. And so, um, of course, we wanted to do it the right way and, uh, we want to make sure that the people enrolling are qualified for graduate school, but if you look at some of the people who apply for graduate school, they have a bachelor’s degree, but it’s like in music or something that wouldn’t necessarily translate. And I thought about two different people, groups of people in mind, and Kevin did too. One was marginalized communities and how do we diversify our workforce and give them an opportunity if for example on a Native American community all you had was an associates degree option. How could you help those people bring solutions back to their communities as fully trained counselors with master’s degrees? And then the second population we thought about were people in recovery, you know, of all backgrounds and all demographics and people who lost some years of their lives because of up and down journeys and now they may be working as a tech or they may be working as a driver or they may be working as a volunteer. Um, and I know they want to give back, but they don’t want to go back to college and get the fancy papers. and how do we give those groups of people the opportunity to transform their lives within one generation so that they can make a difference because I know that’s where their heart’s at. So, so Kevin and his faculty did the hard work and they created a program. They made sure it had a lot of rigor on the admission side and so I believe the initial pilot was nine students or something like that. This is their second year piloting that admissions pathway. But here’s the other thing now, you know, just because you open that pathway doesn’t mean everyone can afford it. And so one of the things that we offer is if you’re an employee of Hazel Limb and Betty Ford, if you work in the kitchen, if you’re anybody, okay, like if you uh work in our our back office and you want to go to our grad school, uh we will give you a 75% tuition discount, okay? Because we believe in that. And then if for example you decide not to do that and you go to a grad school and you get employed by us, we have an annual uh loan uh repayment program that we instituted and the whole purpose is to you know actualize uh this change. You know a lot of recovery and I spoke about this today here at Naccon is about giving back. It’s about volunteerism and giving back. And so many people in recovery have been through so much suffering and they they empathize with other people out there and they spend their lives giving back. And so giving people an actual pathway to do that is super exciting. Well, so many things you’ve just talked about really excite me. the whole notion of growing your own, of creating alternative pathways. And that’s why I’m so excited that uh National Council and Hazelton are going to be launching a new partnership to try to create create a pathway for our members uh to take access to take advantage of your graduate school. There’ll be tuition discounts for member agencies and obviously place and we’re also going to be working to create placements for existing students. and you know maybe just talk a little bit about you know kind of the benefits of uh this kind of arrangement. Yeah I think Chuck when you and I spoke I think we were both on the same page and aligned in the pandemic there was a lot of turnover and access to mental health is improving and the supply of chain of talented people just can’t keep up. Yeah. And so then we start worrying about quality of care and how people are getting trained and if they don’t get trained they’re going to burn out and it’s going to stigmatize the field further because their quality outcomes aren’t going to be there. So you know how do we solve this? And I think that what we have going on at Hazel and Betty Ford is something we want for the entire field. We want organizations out there who are really um craving highly talented people who are well trained because our counselors can do both mental health and substance use by the way uh to uh get that training. We want to tell them everything we know about uh discounts and loan repayment because we want everybody to have that kind of thrilling talented uh talent pool. Yeah. Well, and I’m also excited that you know our missions are really uh tightly uh uh aligned and also like I hear so many times that people graduate our our members get recent graduates and they have to retrain them that they’re not really used to working in this field or in this this particular client. I also think there’s some great synergy there as well. Well, Joe, thanks so much. Is there anything else that we should know about you or Hazelson? No, I’m just really excited for people to, you know, check out our grad school, check out this partnership. You know, it’s an asynchronous, you can do it remotely, you can work an 8 to5, you can be anywhere in the country and uh go to our grad school and uh stay with your employer of choice and it’s a great opportunity. So, I really look forward to the partnership. Um really want to thank you for your vision of uh intentionally focusing on the workforce. Well, I don’t know since all of my members say that’s their biggest challenge. If I didn’t do that, I think I would be really remiss. Right. So, you know, as we’re getting ready to end our uh our session today, you know, National Council’s uh vision is to create a place where everyone can have mental well-being and that they can thrive. So, just our final question is what does mental well-being mean to you? Well, in recovery, uh, recovery is thriving and it is so different from sobriety, which is maybe the absence of substances or a reduction in of substances. And I think recovery, the way I like to define it is is a person’s ability to really follow the path of their values. And I think when anybody and no one’s perfect, but when we can uh live most of our lives in accordance to the values that we truly believe in and subscribe to, I think that’s thriving. And and then not only that, the people around us thrive. Yeah, that’s great. Well, Joe, thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciated the conversation, your partnership, uh, and the work that you do at Hazelton Betty Ford. Thank you everyone for joining us. And there this is a wrap of Well-being Wednesday. [Music]

The behavioral health workforce is stretched thin — rising demand, burnout and systemic barriers are taking a real toll. But meaningful solutions are starting to take shape. In our Nov. 19 episode of Wellbeing Wednesdays, Joe Lee, MD, president and CEO of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, sits down with National Council President and CEO Chuck Ingoglia to explore what’s working and what’s next. Tune in to hear one of the field’s leading voices break down the strategies that are strengthening today’s workforce, inspiring tomorrow’s and shaping the future of care. You can also catch this episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0VNdvJvRRtEYuGw1QYdISI?si=45d7a41082764a68