Workforce Solutions Jam | Extending the Behavioral Health Workforce: Training the Allied Workforce
This webinar was hosted as a partnership between the College for Behavioral Health Leadership (CBHL), The National Council for Mental Wellbeing, and Health Management Associates (HMA).
In January, the Workforce Solutions Partnership launched a four-part webinar series titled Extending the Behavioral Health Workforce: Innovative Strategies for Integrated Care. This series showcases scalable, practical innovations that expand behavioral health workforce capacity while preserving quality of care. Each session explores a distinct strategy, from enhancing existing roles to leveraging lived experience and technology, to help organizations meet rising demand through integrated, community-centered approaches.
Session 2: Training the Allied Workforce
As behavioral health systems grapple with persistent workforce shortages and growing demand, many organizations are rethinking who delivers care and how. Part two of this four‑part series explores emerging models that equip frontline workers and other non‑licensed staff with foundational behavioral health skills to extend care capacity, particularly in underserved and rural communities. This session highlights how internal training programs, youth‑ and peer‑informed approaches, and community‑centered service models are being used to strengthen care teams, support integrated care, and improve access to critical behavioral health services.
Learning Objectives
- Explore emerging workforce models that prepare frontline workers and other non‑licensed staff to deliver evidence‑informed behavioral health support in clinical and community‑based settings.
- Assess how community‑centered approaches can improve access to care and continuity of services, particularly in underserved or hard‑to‑reach populations.
- Identify strategies for developing internal training programs that expand care capacity while maintaining quality, supervision, and appropriate scope of practice
Audience: We welcome all who are interested in behavioral health workforce expansion. The material is primarily structured to provide maximum value to clinicians and clinical leaders..
Resources:
- Addressing mental health deserts: a geographic and economic analysis of mental health service gaps in Houston (Frontiers in Public Health)
- Lay Counselor Academy
Speaker Information
Carolina “Lena” Ayala is a Community As Medicine coach at Open Source Wellness. She is a mother, wife, author and crossing guard. She holds many titles and positions but what is most important is the healing journey she continues to be on in relation to self, people, food, movement and medicine.
Chakema Carmack, Ph.D. is a community psychologist with a specialty in statistics and methodology. Dr. Carmack currently contributes to the field of prevention science through teaching, community involvement, and personally meaningful research. Her specific interests involve reducing the incidence of HIV and other STIs in African American and Hispanic communities. Her focus is on using health behavior theory and research to create, tailor, and evaluate behavioral STI risk-reduction programs that reflect the unique cultural needs of these populations. Other areas of research focus involve the use of complex adaptive systems methodology and latent variable modeling to explore associations between psychosocial cognitions and sexual risk behavior.
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Education: Ph.D. in Community Psychology, Specialty: Statistics & Methodology, Wichita State University, 2007
Dual Appointment Post-Doc: Prevention Research Center & The Methodology Center, The Pennsylvania State University, 2010
A Native Houstonian, Damien Kelly, Ed.D., MS-HRM, has served in social service organizations for nearly two decades, specializing in service to homeless and low-income communities. As an advocate for social change, he has also done missionary work in parts of the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras, and India. He has been a director for multiple organizations and is now refocusing his career to align with research initiatives attributable to his unwavering belief that today’s research can lead to tomorrow’s cure. He earned a Doctorate in Education and Ethical Leadership from the University of St. Thomas, a Master of Science in Human Resources Management from Houston Baptist University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Texas Southern University.
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Dr. Kelly’s research is interdisciplinary, integrating population health, housing policy, mental health, community-based research, and social justice. He focuses on systemic inequalities, particularly how housing, healthcare access, and mental health service gaps affect marginalized groups. His work also demonstrates a strong community engagement and policy analysis component, positioning him as a scholar who is deeply invested in equity-driven research.
Elizabeth Markle, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist, speaker, writer, researcher, and Professor of Community Mental Health at California Institute of Integral Studies. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of Open Source Wellness, a national nonprofit offering experiential behavioral health and wellness via a “Community As Medicine” approach in collaboration with healthcare providers, payors, and community based organizations.
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Dr. Markle earned her doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Northeastern University and her M.A. in Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard University, and her postdoctoral training in Primary Care-Mental Health Integration at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Dr. Markle is a thought leader in the field of health and wellness and has been sought-after as a consultant for her unique insights and expertise in clinic-community integration, innovative approaches to mental health, and group facilitation.
Elizabeth C. Morrison, Ph.D., LCSW is the co-creator of The Lay Counselor Academy and the leader of Flourish Counseling Services. Elizabeth’s driving force is her passion to centralize empathy and the human connection throughout health and and social care systems. She has dedicated her career to expanding access to high quality mental health services, first as a vanguard in the Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH) field where she was one of the first leaders to establish IBH at a community health center (CHC) in California, going on to help countless other CHCs integrated behavioral health services over the past two decades.
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As a co-creator of The Lay Counselor Academy, Elizabeth has trained over 1,100 community members to provide mental health counseling in their communities, expanding access to high quality, culturally concordant care. Elizabeth launched Flourish in 2020, to “help the helpers” by providing easy access to high quality mental health care for employees of health and social care organizations. The Flourish team prioritizes skills over degrees, and for this reason, is a mix of licensed clinicians and lay counselors, who do the same work, for equal pay. Elizabeth holds a PhD in psychology from Blanquerna University, has a Master of Social Welfare from UCLA, and a Master Addiction Counselor Certification from the National Association of Addiction Professionals. She has been a practicing clinician for over 30 years.
Series Topics
Session 1: Maximizing Existing Roles (January 2026)
Session 2: Training the Allied Workforce (February 2026)
Session 3: Technology as an Extender (March 2026)
Session 4: Lived Experience as a Resource (April 2026)
Background
The Workforce Solutions Jam is a monthly webinar to build national momentum and encourage collaboration through the Workforce Solutions Partnership. The partnership is leveraging Collective Impact to address the workforce crisis, and using a cross-sector approach to address the long-standing challenges for expanding and solidifying the behavioral health workforce.
The Workforce Solutions Partnership is the partnership between the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, Health Management Associates and the College for Behavioral Health Leadership. The Center for Workforce Solutions continues to operate as an initiative of the National Council.