2024 Children's of Alabama/UAB Annual Report

Patient Care, Quality & Safety

Integrated Mental Health Services in Primary Care Clinic By Heather Watts

There is a growing need to provide mental health services for children and adolescents across the United States, but many face barriers to access and stigma. Physicians in the UAB Pediatric Primary Care Clinic (PCC) saw this need among their patients and determined that the best way to care for their patients was to provide these services as part of their primary care.

In January 2022, the PCC began providing access to a child psychologist two afternoons a week, and they saw the incredible impact this had on their patients and families. By the end of 2022, the clinic had seen 300 patients for mental health services. Due to the success of this integrated approach and the increase in demand, Margaret Canter, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Academic General Pediatrics, increased her presence in the clinic and now sees patients one full day and two half days a week. “The number one goal for embedding mental health services in the PCC was to increase access to mental health care treatment for the clinic’s patient population,” explains Canter. “There is still a lot of stigma associated with mental health illness, and having the services offered in a clinic with which the patients and their families are familiar can reduce systemic and structural barriers (e.g., cost, transportation, availability of providers) and make it that much easier for the families to follow through on treatment recommendations.”

By expanding prevention services and intervening early, the clinic can address some of the barriers for minority populations’ access to mental health services. There is a shortage of child psychologists in the Birmingham area, and of those child psychologists, even a smaller

2024 Academic Annual Report

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