The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is offering two types of mental and behavioral health education and training grants to education and training organizations, both with an application deadline of May 7. The grant programs offer a total of approximately $69 million to train behavioral health professionals and paraprofessionals, with a focus on prevention, treatment and recovery services for substance use disorders. ACA members working for eligible applicants may be interested in applying.

The HRSA Opioid Workforce Expansion Program (OWEP) for professionals is open to accredited institutions of higher education or accredited behavioral health professional training programs. This program is designed to enhance community-based experiential training for students preparing to become behavioral health professionals with a focus on prevention, treatment and recovery services for opioid use disorder (OUD) and other substance use disorders (SUD). The estimated total funding for this program is $39.3 million.

The HRSA Opioid Workforce Expansion Program (OWEP) for paraprofessionals funds similar training for peer support specialists and other types of behavioral health-related paraprofessionals. Eligible applicants include state-licensed mental health nonprofit and for-profit organizations. These organizations must be able to carry out programs for pre-service or in-service training of paraprofessional child and adolescent mental health workers. The estimated total funding for this program is $29.8 million, with an award ceiling of $900,000.

Detailed information on eligible applicants and other aspects of the grants is available online.