Training Community Members for Frontline Behavioral Health Roles
A Practical, Operational Training Model for Frontline Behavioral Health Roles
The University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita developed a hands-on training program that prepares community members to work as community health workers or similar roles focused on substance use disorder and mental illness, starting in the four Kansas counties with the highest behavioral health need, and built to expand statewide with certification to follow.
The Challenge They Were Addressing
Kansas had a limited behavioral health workforce where the need was greatest. People living with substance use disorder and mental illness most often meet a community health worker, navigator, case manager, or peer specialist long before they reach a physician. Yet, community health workers in the state typically received little to no training on mental health or substance use disorder. Dr. Elizabeth Ablah, who leads the program, put it plainly: “Most of the people these frontline workers see have a mental illness, a substance use disorder, or both, and the CHWs were not being prepared to recognize it or to keep working with someone once they did.”
Other available trainings were academic rather than operational. As Dr. Ablah described it, community health workers came out of existing trainings knowing the ideas and grounded in a service mindset, but with no clear answer to the basic question of how to actually do the work day-to-day. That gap was a statewide deficit, and it was evident in the counties carrying the heaviest substance use disorder and mental illness burden: Sedgwick, Reno, Sumner, and Cowley.
The team also saw a pipeline problem. The communities with the greatest need were the same as those least likely to have a local, trained behavioral health workforce drawn from their own residents. Building training that recruited community members and prepared them for paid frontline roles was a way to address the workforce shortage and the trust gap simultaneously.
What They Built
KUSM-W built a community behavioral health worker training program that takes people with a service-minded orientation and equips them with the operational skills that existing training programs left out. The training prepares participants to step into work as community health workers or similar frontline roles, with the content weighted toward a practical understanding of how to address substance use disorder and mental illness in the population they serve.
The curriculum is organized around four components: population health, community health work, mental health, and substance use disorder. Rather than treating these as separate courses, the training connects them so that a trainee can recognize signs of a mental illness or a substance use disorder and better engage the individual based on their needs, regardless of what they present with. The training team was assembled to match that breadth, drawing trainers from Mental Health America of South Central Kansas, the Substance Abuse Center of Kansas, and KU team members, who delivered operational components.
The team treats the training as a living product rather than a one-time course. Five cohorts were delivered during the grant period, with each round informed by the last. That cycle allowed the team to adjust content and delivery to what frontline workers actually needed once they were on the job.
Alongside the curriculum, the team is developing supports that connect training to employment: a toolkit for trainees, a standardized position description so that employers and workers share the same expectations, and a job-readiness session that links participants directly with organizations seeking to fill these roles. The long-term plan adds formal certification and statewide expansion, building the training into a repeatable pipeline.
Key Program Components
Who You Need at the Table
What made a willing partner essential vs. optional?
The partners who make this work possible are the ones who bring real teaching capacity to the two areas that the existing community health worker training does not cover. A trainer from the Mental Health America of South Central Kansas and a trainer from the Substance Abuse Center of Kansas are not interchangeable with a general instructor specializing in community health work; they give participants instruction from people who carry the work, which is the difference between learning about mental health and substance use disorder and learning how to act on what you see. COPE was essential in providing training for the public health and community health worker component, and their network provided the team with an existing set of community relationships across Kansas to recruit from. COPE also provided expertise from trainers who have worked in these roles. They speak to the content, the application, and the experience of doing this work. The employing organizations are equally required because they provide trainees with a starting point for potential places to pursue employment, depending on their areas of focus.
The helpful partners widen the reach. Local community-based organizations in the four target counties helped find residents who reflect the communities they will serve. These relationships speed up recruitment, but training could launch without them, as long as the core teaching partners and a hiring pathway are in place.
Budget Breakdown
What is the minimum viable budget to replicate this?
A leaner version of this training does not need the full annual budget. Still, it does need two things that cannot be cut: qualified trainers in community health work, mental health, and substance use disorder, and a hiring pathway that connects trainees to future potential employers. A county working with a smaller amount could run a single training iteration rather than five, lean on partner organizations to supply trainers in kind, and start with one role type, such as community health workers. The program lead cautioned that asking one person to build the curriculum, recruit, train, and place graduates within a single year would be too much; the work is feasible only on a smaller scale if a small team shares it.
What Worked and Why
Specific decisions or design features that drove success
Teaching the operational how, not just the concepts, is what sets this training apart. Existing community health worker training programs in Kansas left graduates knowing the ideas but unsure how best to implement them and do the work.
Weighting the curriculum toward mental health and substance use disorder matched the training to reality. The majority of people that community health workers and others in similar roles meet are living with a mental illness, a substance use disorder, or both. Training that did not account for that fact would have sent workers into the field unprepared for most of whom they would actually serve, doing a disservice to themselves and their clients.
Bringing in trainers from Mental Health America of South Central Kansas and the Substance Abuse Center of Kansas, rather than relying solely on university trainers, provided participants with instruction grounded in current practice. Pairing those partners with the KU team members for the operational components produced a training team that covered both the clinical content and the day-to-day demands of the role.
Running five cohorts instead of a single course allowed the team to implement quality improvement strategies informed by evaluation metrics, improving the training as it went. Each round reflected what the previous group needed as they worked, so the curriculum became sharper and more useful with each cohort.
Designing the training around recruitment of community members in the highest-need counties tied workforce development to the communities that needed workers most. Those trained came from 13 counties across the state, including places the program aimed to serve, which strengthens both the local workforce and the trust between workers and the people they help.
Early outcomes and data
Five separate training cohorts were delivered during the grant period, each refined from the previous round.
The curriculum is built around four interconnected components: population health, community health work, mental health, and substance use disorder.
The training team was assembled from the Mental Health America of South Central Kansas, the Substance Abuse Center of Kansas, and KU.
A trainee toolkit and a standardized position description were developed to support graduates and their future employers.
Job readiness session created to connect graduates with organizations hiring for frontline behavioral health roles.
Plans are in place for formal certification and statewide expansion.
Lessons Learned
Train for the job. The clearest lesson from this work is that frontline behavioral health workers need operational instruction in addition to conceptual coursework. Workers who learned how to do the job were ready to work; workers who only learned the ideas were not.
Match the curriculum to who workers actually serve. Because most clients present with mental illness, substance use disorder, or both, weighting the training toward those areas was the difference between preparing workers for reality and preparing them for an exception.
Use trainers who carry the work. Bringing in instructors from a mental health association and a substance use treatment center added credibility and up-to-date practice knowledge that university trainers alone could not provide.
Plan to iterate. Five rounds delivered a more effective training than any single course could have. Each cohort surfaced what to adjust, so build time for revision into the model from the start.
Tie training to employment from day one. The toolkit, the standardized position description, and the job readiness session exist so that completed training leads to a filled role. Workforce programs that stop at a certificate do not close the gap they set out to close.