UCLA Nursing receives $1 million grant to expand mental health care training in Los Angeles

The UCLA School of Nursing will receive nearly $1 million to train nurses through the post-Master’s Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Certificate program, thanks to a 2024 Psychiatric Education Capacity Expansion (PECE) grant from the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI). 

The PMHNP program at UCLA is a collaborative postgraduate certificate program involving the nursing schools at UC Davis (program administrator), UC San Francisco, UC Irvine, and UCLA. This HCAI grant will support UCLA’s involvement in the program and allow it to recruit more post-graduate nursing students to meet the mental health care needs of California. 

“Access to quality, specialized mental health care is extremely difficult to find for a variety of reasons,” said Dr. Stacey Green, the UCLA & UC Davis Nursing faculty member who applied for the PECE grant. “As a graduate of this program myself, I know how important these roles are in providing comprehensive psychiatry and mental health services for vulnerable patients. We are thankful to HCAI for this important funding.” 

Research from UC Davis, CSU Sacramento, The Kaiser Family Foundation, and UCSF estimate that there are only about 200 psychiatric providers per 100,000 residents in Los Angeles, leading to long wait times and difficulty accessing care.

Additionally, the same research has shown that by 2028, California will have 41% fewer psychiatrists and 11% fewer psychologists, licensed marriage, and family therapists (LMFTs), licensed professional clinical counselors (LPCCs), and licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs) than needed to meet the state's behavioral health needs. This is the gap the UC-wide PMHNP consortium hopes to fill. 

Learn more about the Post-Masters Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Certificate program