Experiences of Collaborative Behavioral Health-Care Professionals: Implications for Social Work Education and Training

Although interprofessional literature increasingly emphasizes collaboration in delivery of integrated health-care services, practitioners' views on service implementation are less known. This study explored provider perspectives on collaboration in two Los Angeles County health-care initiatives based on the chronic care model: one focused on provider collaboration, the other on service access and organization-level collaboration in designated neighborhoods. De-identified transcripts were analyzed from a public health-care forum featuring professionals (five social workers, a psychologist, an educator, and a paraprofessional health promotor) purposively selected from the initiatives. Core themes pertained to benefits, challenges, training needs, and potential social work roles in these integrated health-care settings. Results offer recommendations for high-quality collaborative health-care service provision and development of social work curricula and workforce training.