ProgramsUT Dallas Sociology & Public Health Applied Research Consulting Program (Spring 2027)ProjectsOpportunity Assessment for Community College Training in Behavioral...

Project Title: Opportunity Assessment for Community College Training in Behavioral Health Care Management

Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute

Details
Project Title Opportunity Assessment for Community College Training in Behavioral Health Care Management
Project Topics Employee and Labor Management Growth Strategy Innovation Political Organization, Policy Change, and Advocacy Research & Development Research, Analysis, Evaluation Strategic Planning
Skills & Expertise Communication Credential Evaluation Data analysis Data Visualization Database Management GIS Mapping Policy Evaluation Professional Presentation. Project Management Public Health Policy Analysis Qualitative Research Quantitative Research Research Methods Stakeholder Analysis Strategic Planning
Project Synopsis: Challenge/Opportunity
Collaborative Care (CoCM) is an evidence-based model for treating mental health conditions in primary care, where many people first seek help. A central role in the model is the behavioral health care manager (BHCM), who tracks patient progress and coordinates with the primary care provider and a consulting psychiatrist. Practices that want to offer CoCM often struggle to find and hire BHCMs, which limits how many patients the model can reach. 

Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina are the only states are the only ones whose Medicaid programs require just training in behavioral health for BHCMs, without specifying a degree or license, according to the Meadows Institute’s October 2026 review of state requirements. That flexibility opens the door to shorter, community college–based training. But a new pathway only works if it’s built where practices are delivering CoCM, where employers are hiring, and where employers will accept a credential below the graduate level. 

The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute wants to support a new community college training pathway for BHCMs but does not yet have a systematic way to identify where one would succeed. This project asks students to build that evidence. Using public provider billing data, job postings, state Medicaid requirements, and existing college program data, students will identify the communities best positioned to host a new community college training pathway and the surrounding areas where its graduates could be hired. 

Students will gain hands-on experience working with messy public datasets, building a transparent prioritization framework, and translating data into recommendations for a policy organization. These skills apply directly to careers in public health research, workforce planning, and health policy.
Project Synopsis: Activities/Actions Required
Phase 1: Set up and define the approach (Weeks 1–3) 
  • Review background materials, including the Meadows Institute’s 50-state BHCM requirements summary and an introduction to the Collaborative Care model.
  • Confirm the job-posting data source (licensed dataset through the university, or manual collection from public job boards within their terms of use).
  • Choose the geographic unit (county or metro area) used across all four data layers.
  • Define which job titles count as BHCM roles and write coding rules for education, licensure, certification, and experience requirements.
  • Agree on how “host” and “hire” are defined, including whether a college can serve a surrounding hiring region.
  • Submit a short methods memo for review.
Phase 2: Collect and clean the data (Weeks 4–8)
  • Download and filter CMS Medicare provider billing data for CoCM codes in the eight states, and map billing activity by the chosen geography.
  • Document what the billing data cannot capture (Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, commercial claims, and suppressed low-volume providers).
  • Collect BHCM-related job postings and record location, employer type, posting date, and stated requirements.
  • Pull community college program data from IPEDS / College Navigator for related programs.
  • Maintain a codebook and data log as the datasets are built.

Phase 3: Analyze (Weeks 9–12)
  • Code job posting requirements and summarize patterns by state and community.
  • Identify where employers accept candidates without a graduate degree or license, and where they don’t.
  • Combine the four data layers into a scoring framework with documented weights and assumptions.
  • Test how the rankings change under different weights to see which results hold up.
  • Share preliminary findings for feedback.
Phase 4: Recommend and deliver (Weeks 13–15)
  • Select the top 5–8 communities, noting the confidence level and main data limitation for each.
  • Prepare the final report with maps, an eight-state comparison table, and the prioritized community list.
  • Deliver a clean dataset and codebook.
  • Present findings
Project Synopsis: Expected Results
Success for the Meadows Institute means: 
  • A prioritized list of 5–8 communities across the eight states, each with a documented rationale, a confidence rating, and its main data limitation.
  • A finding on whether employers in these states hire BHCMs without a graduate degree or license, and how often, so the Institute knows whether a community college credential is likely to be hireable. A finding that demand is limited is still a useful result.
  • A clean, documented dataset and codebook that Institute staff can update without the students.
  • A scoring framework with stated weights and assumptions, tested to show which rankings hold up under different weightings.
Measurable results: 
  • CoCM billing activity mapped for all eight states at the agreed geographic unit (county or metro area).
  • A coded dataset of BHCM-related job postings across all eight states, with a target sample size set in the methods memo.
  • Education, licensure, certification, and experience requirements coded for 100% of collected postings.
  • Community college programs related to BHCM training identified for each shortlisted community.
  • 5–8 communities prioritized, each with a confidence rating and stated limitation.
  • Final report, dataset, codebook, and presentation delivered by the end of the semester.

Project Timeline

Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute - Opportunity Assessment for Community College Training in Behavioral Health Care Management
Due Date
Activities
Deliverables
Status
Action
Fri, 02/06/26
Kickoff Eval
Required Evaluation
Evaluation submission is required.
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Wed, 02/03/27
Program Kickoff
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