Welcome to the NPTC-Cascades Region! The National Psychology Training Consortium (NPTC) is a collaborative consortium which employs an empirically-informed competency-based practitioner-scholar model while training prospective psychologists in the integration, discipline and practice of clinical psychology focusing on provision of services in rural and underserved health care. The Cascades Region has been fully accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the APA since October 20th, 2019, with our next site visit occurring in 2022. NPTC-Cascades has been an APPIC member since 2017.
The Cascades Region is made up of three Community Health Center’s within the state of Washington and Oregon, HealthPoint, Community Health of Central Washington (CHCW), and Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic (YVFWC). These three organizations share a common value of providing future psychologists and medical providers training in a fully integrated community health center. Operating as behavioral health consultants (BHCs) via the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model, predoctoral interns will work alongside medical professionals and trainees to provide patients holistic care. Specifically, our health centers embrace the philosophy of GATHER (Reiter et al., 2018). Our BHCs are true Generalists, serving all ages and conditions seen in primary care. They strive to be Accessible to their community by being imbedded and fully integrated within primary care clinics and providing same-day access for patients and providers. Further, the BHCs are Team-oriented and work side-by-side with all medical personnel, including medical providers, nurses, medical assistants, pharmacists, interpreters, etc. We also value being Highly productive and applying population-based principles to behavioral health; meaning, we strive to provide meaningful and intentional interventions to as much of our community as possible. This value of high productivity also corresponds with our value of social justice, as our communities often do not have access to behavioral health providers. Our BHCs also value being Educators to our community and our medical organizations; essentially, we want our entire communities and health centers to be more aware of the interconnection between physical and behavioral health. Lastly, we want to be a Routine part of the health system and work to ensure that BHC involvement in patient care and clinic workflows is the expectation, rather than the exception. Due to our organizations being Community Health Centers, interns will be able to work with a variety of patients from different backgrounds, which are culturally diverse, and largely underserved. Further, our mission of being a CHC is rooted in social justice and ensuring healthcare is provided to every individual within our communities.
HealthPoint – HealthPoint has several clinic locations for our doctoral psychology internship program within 23 miles of Seattle. HealthPoint’s mission is to provide services to individuals and communities in King County that are unable to receive care in the city of Seattle. Each intern will be assigned to either one large clinic or two smaller clinics where he/she/they will split his/her/their time. All clinics will provide the same training opportunities and model of care, but clinics to have some variability in populations served and some individual clinic services (OBGYN, pediatrician, natural medicine providers are examples). Please see our website to learn more about the opportunities at HealthPoint!
Community Health of Central Washington (CHCW) is located in Yakima, Washington. Two hours southeast of Seattle, Yakima is a metropolitan agricultural community rich in culture and, for a health professional, rich in opportunities to make a difference in people’s lives. For more information about the Yakima area of Washington go here. Interns matched to CHCW will provide services within three different clinic locations through specific rotations, including a full spectrum family medicine residency clinic, a pediatric clinic, and a rural clinic. Please see our website to learn more about the opportunities at CHCW/YNHS!
Yakima Valley Farm Workerss Clinic (YVFWC) offers pre-doctoral psychology internships in integrated primary care at four clinical locations in west-central Oregon. YVFWC employs the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model of behavioral health integration within primary care utilizing Behavioral Health Consultants (BHC). BHCs meet with patients and their primary care doctor and education, brief intervention, and holistic care as part of the primary care team. The 12-month program provides extensive clinical experiences, including focal areas that allow interns to offer same-day primary care services for underserved patients, with particular emphasis on pediatric and adolescent patients. Please visit the website for more information about YVFWC!