Name
They Gave us a Seat but not a Voice: Hard-Won Lessons in Supporting PCBH Managers to Thrive
Description

Many of our PCBH managers are BIPOC, master’s-level clinicians walking into medical leadership structures that were never designed with them in mind. We will examine these dynamics honestly and through a justice and equity lens – because we cannot support our managers through an experience we have not named. We will share our team’s experience empowering a cohort of PCBH managers to effectively inhabit their positional power and navigate and challenge white supremacy culture to support integrated behavioral health within our primary care clinics. We will share the mistakes we made that cost us almost complete turnover across the team, and the lessons we have put into place since. Hear from both a PCBH manager and the PCBH director about this journey so you can stand on our shoulders as we collectively strive to transform systems to provide low barrier behavioral health access to the communities who need it the most.

Speakers
Saba Shahid, PsyD
Megan Elliott
Content Level
Intermediate
Tags
Social justice or DEI, Training/Supervision, Workforce development
Session Type
Concurrent
Objective 1
Identify three unique administrative and operational challenges faced by PCBH managers working within interdisciplinary medical leadership structures, including the experience of practicing in a context that inherently decenters behavioral health.
Objective 2
Recognize three organizational and supervisory conditions that contribute to moral injury and turnover among PCBH managers, drawing on real-world case examples from a PCBH leadership team that experienced near-complete turnover.
Objective 3
Develop an initial action plan for supporting PCBH managers through a justice and antiracist lens, drawing on lessons learned from both a PCBH manager and director perspective.
Content Reference 1

Ogbeide, S. A., Bauman, D., & Beachy, B. (2023). Clinical supervision within the primary care behavioral health model: What we know and where we need to go. Psychological Services, 20(2), 335–342. https://doi.org/10.1037/ser0000684

Content Reference 2

Debets, M., Jansen, I., Lombarts, K., Kuijer-Siebelink, W., Kruijthof, K., Steinert, Y., Daams, J., & Silkens, M. (2023). Linking leadership development programs for physicians with organization-level outcomes: A realist review. BMC Health Services Research, 23(1), 783. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09811-y

Content Reference 3

Soklaridis, S., Lin, E., Black, G., Paton, M., LeBlanc, C., Besa, R., MacLeod, A., Silver, I., Whitehead, C. R., & Kuper, A. (2022). Moving beyond ‘think leadership, think white male’: The contents and contexts of equity, diversity and inclusion in physician leadership programmes. BMJ Leader, 6(2), 146–157. https://doi.org/10.1136/leader-2021-000542

Content Reference 4

Thoebes, G. P., Porter, T. H., & Peck, J. A. (2024). Physicians as leaders: A systematic review through the lens of expert leadership. Leadership in Health Services, 37(1), 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHS-02-2023-0008