News
Major Grant Boosts Support for Students of Color at CIISJul 9 2009
CIIS has received a grant of $210,000 from The California Wellness Foundation for the Community Mental Health Program. This grant will sponsor scholarships for minority students with financial need with $70,000 in funds in each of three years. The grant is part of the foundation’s “Diversity in the Health Professions” initiative.
“This grant will help CIIS to do our part to address the acute need for culturally competent and diverse mental health professionals to serve the needs of California,” said CIIS President Joseph L. Subbiondo. “Only 6% of psychologists in the U.S. are people of color, while more than half the population of California fits that category.”
Subbiondo noted that the Community Mental Health (CMH) Program has a goal of training 200 marriage and family therapists for service in the public and non-profit sector in the next decade. “One of our main goals for the CMH Program is to make sure that half the students are from ethnic and racial minorities,” Subbiondo added.
CIIS has already received several grants for the Community Mental Health Program in its first year. Other supporters include the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund, and the San Francisco Foundation. The Community Mental Health Program had eighteen students enrolled in its first cohort and will welcome twenty-three students in its second cohort this fall.
Created in 1992 as an independent, private foundation, The California Wellness Foundation’s mission is to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education, and disease prevention.
