Chickasaw Nation Pediatric Collaborative

The Chickasaw Nation was awarded funding through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Pediatric Mental Health Care Access (PMHCA) grant program in 2021 to implement a five-year project that would establish the first tribally managed PMHCA program in Oklahoma. Through a partnership of the CN Department of Health and CN Department of Family Services, the Chickasaw Nation Pediatric Collaborative (CNPC) was created to provide bi-directional training and technical assistance, tele-consultation access and care coordination to transfer expert knowledge of child mental health, rural pediatric practice and the needs of First American children amongst medical, mental health and allied professionals.

The goal of the Collaborative is to increase knowledge and integration of treatment approaches for increased access to youth mental health services. Through specialty consultation and bidirectional T/TA, this project actively expands and leverages regional and statewide professional networks to increase the capacity of pediatric practice teams to provide effective, critically needed and culturally resonant mental health treatment for rural First American children and youth.

In January 2021, Chickasaw Nation contracted with MPHI to evaluate their CN PMHCA program. In project year one, MPHI assisted CN with conducting a needs assessment among participating providers to identify their strengths, needs, and preferences for training and teleconsultation. The CN gained valuable insight through the needs assessment results that helped shape the direction of the educational offerings.