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The acronym says it all. BeHERE NV stands for Behavioral Health Education, Retention, and Expansion Network of Nevada. Several years in the making, this program’s lofty name is also clearly communicating its lofty goals.

What exactly is BeHERE NV? It is a program that will offer educational and outreach events about mental health careers to K-12 students and adult learners and will then work to connect those students with access to and training in the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE). Once education and training is complete, BeHERE NV will seek to retain those students so that they stay in Nevada and serve our communities.

The driving force behind BeHERE NV is the program’s executive director Sara Hunt. From the initial idea to acquisition of state funding to hiring the team, Hunt has been the throughline for BeHERE NV every step of the way.

“When I was hired at ������ at the end of 2014,” says Hunt, “it was to oversee a grant. The grant was to look at improving the mental health workforce in Nevada and, specifically, how to recruit more students into our training programs and how we could encourage our graduates to stay in Nevada.”

The actual idea for BeHERE NV, though, came to Hunt when she attended a webinar two years later. “I heard a presentation in 2016 by the Behavioral Health Education Center of Nebraska and how they created this behavioral health workforce pipeline center under their higher education system through legislative action and state funding. They were showing really good results growing their mental health workforce by going out to high schools across the state and starting to educate and promote mental health careers.”

As she talked with the Nebraska group and reviewed their model, the idea for BeHERE NV began to take shape. The first step became clear quickly: obtain state funding.

Prior attempts to use legislative action to create a center were unsuccessful for various reasons. In 2022, Hunt began working with the Rural Regional Behavioral Health Policy Board, one of five Nevada boards composed of community leaders, family and peer advocates, as well as health care and treatment, social services, and law enforcement professionals focused on improving the behavioral health system in Nevada. The Rural Regional Behavioral Policy Board specifically represents a six-county region in the northeastern part of the state, which includes Elko, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Pershing, and White Pine counties. The board used their bill draft request to create Assembly Bill 37 in the 2023 session. Assembly Bill 37 passed with full bipartisan support and state funding for BeHERE NV became a reality.

BeHERE NV officially began in October 2023. As with any new endeavor, building a staff was the first order of business. Hunt began recruiting and hiring for several positions, as well as creating marketing materials for outreach events and developing its website. In addition to these first steps, they will venture to make key connections with the other NSHE institutions and work with their training programs, as well as stakeholders in the community, to start building this workforce pipeline.

Looking beyond its first year, BeHERE NV will solidify the meaning of its name by continuing to educate, retain, and expand. Hunt says they will establish regular outreach events for the K-12 system, having attended five already this year at several high schools across the state. They will also work toward educating and recruiting adult learners. “That was one of the things the rural regional policy board felt very strongly about … doing education and recruitment of adult learners. Specifically, individuals already working in entry-level health care positions, but wanting to advance their career by getting more education. Also, those that are unemployed or looking for a career change. We want to offer the same education and outreach about mental health careers to those folks. So, we’ll be doing that work in the community, as well.”

BeHERE NV will also be putting a lot of effort toward retention. “We’ll be looking at ways to encourage our graduates to stay in Nevada. Helping to develop more post-graduate internship placements and training more mental health professionals to supervise those interns. Those are the goals beyond year one,” says Hunt. “Those are the ways we will build these strong pathways from K-12 to working here in Nevada.”

While specific program outcomes are being developed, Hunt hopes to follow the example set by the Nebraska program that provided the inspiration for BeHERE NV. Over time, they saw a 40 to 45 percent increase of mental health professionals working in their state. Soon, she hopes to add a dashboard to with the assistance of the Office of Statewide Initiatives at the University of Nevada, Reno that will display real-time data of the number of healthcare professionals in the state. Hopefully, this dashboard will begin to reflect the increase in this number Nevada so desperately needs.

“Yes, that’s an impressive increase and we would love to see that eventually. We especially want to see an increase in the rural counties,” says Hunt, “and that we’re drawing people to work and serve in those communities.”