Dr. Caroline Easton Awarded $1.4 Million Grant

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HRSA) awarded Dr. Caroline Easton close to $1.4 Million Dollars. HRSA designated her as an awardee for the Graduate Psychology Education (GPE) Program designed to Advance the Field of Addiction Treatments within the Profession of Clinical Psychology.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has also reached out to Dr. Easton for her efforts to advance the field and are acknowledging these efforts via APA’s Government Relations Office. This office will be working with Members of Congress to push for advancing more services for underserved populations. Dr. Easton’s Grant will be one of the first to use TelePsychology & TeleHealth to help improve addiction treatment and access to care for the homeless in Rochester, NY.

Title:
Training Clinical Psychology Interns to use Evidence-Based Care Models and Tele-Behavioral Health Technology to Treat Opioid Use Disorders and Substance Use Disorders in Monroe County

Grant Abstract:
Dr. Easton will lead efforts to offer specialized training in the addiction field to graduate-level psychology interns. The GPE proposal is to provide funding/support to CHST'S Priority Psychology Internship Program. Funds will be used to train psychology interns to administer addiction assessments and evidence-based care models in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner within the behavioral health field. Services will target Opioid Use Disorder and other Substance Use Disorder prevention and treatment services in high need areas within Monroe County. Monroe County had over 500 opioid drug overdoses last year, which underscores the need for more specializations in the addiction field. The goal of this training program at RIT is to increase the number and quality of psychology interns trained to provide access to quality substance use services. Our interns will be trained to administer telehealth technology to improve access to health services and improve patient outcomes.
 

Investigators:
PI and Director of the Training Grant: Caroline Easton, Ph.D., CHST
Cory Crane, Ph.D. and Cassandra Berbary, Ph.D., Co-I’s on the Training Grant.