The AAMFT Blog

Minority Fellowship Program Applications Are Open

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MFP Applications for the 2023-2024 year is currently open and will close Saturday, February 11, 2023. 

The AAMFT Research and Education Foundation's Minority Fellowship Program offers three Fellowships. The MFP is one of the longest running behavioral health workforce development grants funded by the federal government – funding provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

These Fellowships are: 

1. Dissertation Completion Fellowship (DCF)-For doctoral students at the dissertation stage of their curriculum; 
2. Doctoral Fellowship (DF)-For doctoral students still in the process of completing pre-dissertation core curriculum; 
3. Minority Fellowship Program- Youth (MFP-Y)-For masters students interested in service provision to the nation’s youth. 

Find more application information, click here. 

Email the Minority Fellowship Program staff with any questions or concerns at [email protected]. 

Minority Fellowship Applications for 2018-2019

MFP Applications for the 2018-19 year will open Friday, December 1, 2017 and close Wednesday, January 31, 2018.

The AAMFT Research and Education Foundation's Minority Fellowship Program offers three Fellowships. The MFP is one of the longest running behavioral health workforce development grants funded by the federal government – funding provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). These Fellowships are:

1. Dissertation Completion Fellowship (DCF)-For doctoral students at the dissertation stage of their curriculum;
2. Doctoral Fellowship (DF)-For doctoral students still in the process of completing pre-dissertation core curriculum;
3. Now Is The Time: Minority Fellowship Program- Youth (NITT-MFP-Y)-For masters students interested in service provision to the nation’s youth.

Find more information here.

Join MFP staff for an informational webinar on applying for a Fellowship. Choose a time that works for you (all webinars are from 11 am - 12 pm eastern):

Thursday, December, 14, 2017. Click here to join 

Thursday, January 11, 2018. Click here to join 

Thursday, January 25, 2018  Click here to join

Email the Minority Fellowship Program staff with any questions or concerns at [email protected].

A Gift For You

May is National Mental Health Month, which raises awareness about mental illness and related issues in our country. Attitudes towards mental health issues are shifting, negative attitudes and stigma associated with mental health are being bridged and there has been growing acceptance towards mental health issues and support for people with them. The AAMFT Research & Education Foundation is excited to announce thank you gifts for contributions that fall into particular levels of giving to the Foundation in the month of May. This is a great opportunity for members to contribute and make an impact for not only the future of the MFT profession, but for mental health awareness in the country.

Volunteers Needed for Minority Fellowship Program

Volunteer Information- Join Us Today!

 Volunteering for the Minority Fellowship Program is a great opportunity to:

• Further the mission of expanding culturally competent mental health services to underserved populations,
• Contribute to the growth and development of the behavioral health workforce,
• Gain access to like-minded professionals, with similar inserts and professional goals.

 Three significant ways that you can enhance the profession:

Mentor Positions

• MFP Mentors will provide academic, professional and career development guidance to AAMFT MFP Fellows.
• MFP Mentors are marriage and family therapists or other behavioral health professional volunteers.
• This position has no term limit.

Ad-Hoc Review Positions

• Ad-Hoc reviewers serve as initial reviewers on eligible applications for the Doctoral (MFP-DF/DCF) and Masters (NITT-MFP-Y) Fellowships offered by the MFP.
• This position has no term limit.

Advisory Committee Positions

• Professional Member positions and Public Member positions will provide programmatic and professional guidance aid in the growth and development of the AAMFT Minority Fellowship Program.
• Attend all MFP Advisory Committee (AC) meetings. There are one to two Advisory Committee Meetings annually in the DC Metro area. 
• Advisory Committee members serve as reviewers and assist in the determination of Fellows.
• These positions serve a two to three year term. 

Volunteer Information- You may apply for these positions here!

• To learn more about the Minority Fellowship Programs, review the Program Information Page.
• To select the Volunteer position you wish to apply for, please visit the MFP Volunteer Application Information Page.

Volunteer Information Webinars will be held:

 

Thursday, June 15, 2017 @ 2pm-3pm EST Click here to join the webinar!

Thursday, June 22, 2017 @ 2pm-3pm EST Click here to join the webinar!  

Deadline is on Friday, June 30, 2017

 

Minority Fellowship Program Applications are Open

The AAMFT Research and Education Foundation's Minority Fellowship Program offers three Fellowships. The MFP is one of the longest running behavioral health workforce development grants funded by the federal government – funding provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). These Fellowships are:

1. Dissertation Completion Fellowship (DCF)-For doctoral students at the dissertation stage of their curriculum;
2. Doctoral Fellowship (DF)-For doctoral students still in the process of completing pre dissertation core curriculum;
3. Now Is The Time: Minority Fellowship Program- Youth (NITT-MFP-Y)-For masters students interested in service provision to the nation’s youth.

Find more information here.

Join MFP staff for an informational webinar on applying for a Fellowship. Choose a time that works for you (all webinars are from 11 am - 12 pm eastern):

Wednesday, December, 14, 2016. Click here to join 

Monday, January, 9, 2017. Click here to join 

Tuesday, January, 24, 2017  Click here to join

The Future of Family Therapy

Why the Foundation is More Important Now Than Ever

Let me state my case clearly from the outset—we must find a way to provide our financial support to the AAMFT Research & Education Foundation (hereafter, the Foundation) both collectively and individually. There are both historic and contemporary reasons why the Foundation is the key to ensuring the future of family therapy.

Many of you know that the Foundation, created in 1942, later became “AAMFT,” the professional association we now know. Why is this significant? The Foundation was created based on the cybernetic notion of systemic relationship, which was a new idea in that era. The cybernetic realization that what something is made of, or its internal organization, is less important than the information it carries in systemic relation to others changed science. The realization that systems are self-correcting allowed the introduction of purpose into scientific theory. The purpose of a system is its output. This idea allowed scientists to focus on relationships— marriages at first, then later, families. “Marriage and family” therapy emerged from putting cybernetic ideas about the importance of relationships into practice. The rocky roads of those early decades eventually led to a singular profession (recognized as one of the core mental health disciplines). Somehow, we have forgotten this history.

The idea that relationships are foundational to all biological life was indeed revolutionary when it emerged in the last century. Yet, we now live in a world that demands evidence of effectiveness. Along the way, this revolutionary idea became framed within the structure of a “scientific revolution” (Kuhn, 1970). In our successful quest to build the “profession” of marriage and family therapy, we have seriously neglected building the evidence in support of the idea and practice of family therapy. We were not originally organized by a profession, a license, or any of the other trappings that now come with our current professional experience.

Sprenkle (2012) recently offered a succinct summary of our current challenge. “Frankly, if CFTs (couple and family therapists), want to have their discipline taken seriously by the external world (including other disciplines, governments, insurance companies, and other third party payers), they will have to continue producing high-quality RCTs (randomized clinical trials) (p. 4).”

Some have criticized the reliability and validity of published research (e.g., Ioannidis, 2005). Further, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the pursuit of evidence-based treatments is itself a fairly fruitless endeavor since, as Wampold (2010) points out, “the research evidence indicates that a variety of treatments, when administered by therapists who believe in the treatment and when accepted by the clients, are equally effective” (p. 71). The more recent focus on common factors in our field suggests a recalibration of our research agenda. As Sparks & Duncan (2010) recommend, “a focus on common factors is empirically informed, enhances the viability of systems therapy in the market, facilitates a framework for training and research, and is accountable to clients, respecting their unique diversity” (p. 382).

Where is most family therapy research produced, and how cohesive and organized is the research agenda for our field? Much of it has historically been produced by family psychologists, psychiatrists, and family sociologists. And, the relative cohesiveness and organization of the research in our field has been lacking. As Sprenkle (2012) noted when reviewing a recent compilation of family therapy research, “certainly, good work can be carried out in other contexts, and non-programmatic research can also be valuable, but it appeared to be hard to keep up with the full-time researchers in medical-related contexts when it came to high output-strong methodology research” (pp. 7-8). Granted, the faculty in our COAMFTE-accredited programs contribute a share of the research produced, but much more is needed and in a more organized and coordinated fashion. Yet, in moving forward, we must remember our past: we were first organized by systemic ideas and practice.

Here’s where the Foundation comes in. As a field organized by an idea and a practice, we need a place where we can support the development of high-quality research that will advance the field and benefit the clients we serve. “There is a great need for more cost research, for more replications by research groups not professionally related to the founders of the models, for more research on mechanisms of change, and for more investigations that approximate real-world clinical practice to enhance ecological validity” (Sprenkle, 2012, p. 12).

The Foundation “exists to fund systemic and relational research, scholarship, and education in an effort to support and enhance the practice of systemic and relational therapies; advance the health care continuum; and improve client outcomes.” The Foundation can become a center for innovative research on systemic treatment, with full-time researchers devoted to cutting edge investigations. The problem, however, in fulfilling this mission is primarily a lack of funds. I hope you will join me in being a contributor to the Foundation so that important systemic research can be funded throughout the years.

www.aamftfoundation.org

References

Ioannidis, J. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med, 2(8), e124. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sparks, J., & Duncan, B. (2010). Common factors in couple and family therapy: Must all have prizes? In B. Duncan, S. Miller, B. Wampold, & M. Hubble (Eds.), The heart & soul of change (2nd ed., pp. 357-391). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Sprenkle, D. (2012). Intervention research in couple and family therapy: A methodological and substantive review and an introduction to the special issue. Journal of Marital & Family Therapy, 38(1), 3-29.

Wampold, B. (2010). The research evidence for common factors models: A historically situated perspective. In B. Duncan, S. Miller, B. Wampold, & M. Hubble (Eds.), The heart & soul of change (2nd ed., pp. 49-81). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

James P. Morris, PhD, is faculty and clinical coordinator, Online Marriage and Family Therapy Program, Abilene Christian University, Dallas, TX. Morris is a Clinical Fellow of AAMFT and a contributor to the Foundation.

 

The Critical Element to Maintaining Relevance in our Field

The AAMFT Research & Education Foundation sat down for a chat with J. Ruben Parra-Cardona, PhD, about the Foundation’s mission and the important work the Foundation will contribute to the marriage and family therapy profession in the future.

Thank you for taking a moment to speak with us, Dr. Parra-Cardona. Let’s start with something that AAMFT is very excited about, and something that is vitally important. We are all familiar now with the Foundation’s newest initiatives. What have you seen so far that you find exciting and promising?

That’s a great opening question! For me, the Foundation's new focus on research, in addition to the other initiatives, is extremely important for our field. Marriage and family therapy programs typically face this challenge of having small numbers of faculty members who are stretched out across multiple responsibilities. They are doing research, teaching, advising and shoulder other responsibilities. This can put our field at a disadvantage, especially when you compare us to other fields with larger faculty bodies, which have similar responsibilities. With the Foundation focusing on providing research support, in various forms, that gives us all a resource that has the potential to provide much needed collegial networking, in addition to infrastructure support for MFTs conducting research. Promoting research in our field is, without a doubt, critical and essential for our profession to keep generating knowledge and maintain relevance.

We definitely agree with that! But now, let’s turn toward your own professional needs, and your practice. How does the AAMFT Foundation bring value to you as a marriage and family therapist?

I believe that in order to remain relevant as a field, we must not only consume knowledge, but generate it, as well. Our profession may offer life-changing experiences for many families and couples, but the most disadvantaged populations in the U.S. still don’t have access to the best mental health interventions. The Foundation has the great potential to help MFTs—like me—who are committed to addressing health disparities. The Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) is already training the next generation of MFTs committed to serving these diverse populations. And that training of new professionals must go hand-in-hand with testing our methods of intervention, in ways that MFTs can reach out to the millions of people who continue to experience access barriers to high-quality mental healthcare.

What else about the AAMFT Foundation's mission appeals to you?

Again, I’m drawn back to mentioning the mission to support funding for research, as well as scholarship, and education—all are essential for the future of the field. Not only do MFTs have the responsibility to empirically demonstrate the impact of our clinical work, but we also carry the responsibility to demonstrate the most effective ways to offer a relevant way towards reducing widespread mental health disparities. Those disparities, unfortunately, continue to negatively impact millions of Americans.

You are a past recipient of the AAMFT Foundation’s Dissertation Award. Can you share how receiving that award helped you in your career?

First, let me say it was an honor to receive that award. My dissertation research focused on the life experiences of teen fathers and the impact of a parenting program adapted for them. The award became tangible, supportive evidence of the ways in which our clinical practice and research can uniquely impact populations—those for whom limited mental health resources exist.

We have a strong understanding of why you support the Foundation, but what would you say to your fellow MFTs about how important the work of the Foundation is and why they should support it?

We need to remain a vibrant and generative profession! In addition to a commitment to excellence in practice, our field must continuously reinvent itself to effectively address the challenges that we face in our profession and our society.

Please consider making a contribution to the Foundation today!

 

Ruben Parra-Cardona, PhD, is an associate professor in the program of couple and family therapy at Michigan State University and a recipient of the AAMFT Foundation’s Dissertation Award. Parra-Cardona says that receiving this grant allowed him to focus his research on parenting with Latino populations. He was able to establish a federally funded program with grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and National Institute On Drug Abuse to conduct research with underserved Latino populations. His clinical experience has included the provision of services to street children engaged in drug trafficking and prostitution, victims of sexual abuse and violence, adolescents involved in the juvenile justice system, and adult federal probationers convicted for drug trafficking.

Professional Resources

Parra-Cardona, J. R., Lopez Zerón, G., Domenech Rodríguez, M., Escobar-Chew, A. R., Whitehead, M., Sullivan, C., & Bernal, G. (2015). A balancing act: Integrating evidence-based knowledge and cultural relevance in a program of prevention parenting research with Latino/a immigrants. Family Process. Advanced online publication. doi: 10.1111/famp.12190

Parra-Cardona, J. R., Aguilar, E., Wieling, E., Domenech Rodríguez, M., & Fitzgerald, H. (2015). Closing the gap between two countries: Feasibility of dissemination of an evidence-based parenting intervention in México. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 41, 465-481. doi: 10.1111/jmft.12098

Parra-Cardona, J. R., Domenech Rodríguez, M., Forgatch, M.S., Sullivan, C., Bybee, D., Tams, L., Holtrop, K., Escobar-Chew, A.R., Bernal, G., & Dates, B. (2012). Culturally adapting an evidence-based parenting intervention for Latino immigrants: The need to integrate fidelity and cultural relevance. Family Process, 51, 56-72. doi: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.2012.01386.x

Parra-Cardona, J. R., Wampler, R. S., & Sharp, E. (2006). “Wanting to be a good father”: Experiences of adolescent fathers of Mexican descent in a teen fathers program. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 32, 215-232.

Parra-Cardona, J. R., Sharp, E., & Wampler, R. S. (2008). “Changing for my kid”: Fatherhood experiences of Mexican-origin teen fathers involved in the justice system.  Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 34, 369-387.

 

 

 

Strengthening Families Together

During the 2015 Annual Conference, The AAMFT Research and Education Foundation sponsored the keynote address from a recipient of the 2004 Minority Scholarship, Nelba Márquez-Greene. She shared the story of her daughter, Ana, whose life tragically ended on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Ms. Márquez-Greene’s journey since her daughter’s death has led her to every level of government, media, and the public to increase understanding and awareness to prevent violence and promote her family’s motto: “Love Wins.” As a sponsor of the keynote and a Reception Luncheon, Foundation supporters were able to meet Ms. Márquez-Greene and network with other supporters. AAMFT Past President Mary Hotvedt spoke about the importance of supporting the AAMFT Research & Education Foundation in providing impactful research for the field of marriage and family therapy.

The AAMFT Research & Education Foundation is proud to provide a forum for MFTs to discuss these important issues that significantly impact the marriage and family therapy profession.

The Foundation also brought together the new cohort of MFP-D Fellows and Fellows from the MFP-Y program. This provided a great atmosphere for the Fellows to meet and network with each other. 

Finally, President Elect Christopher Habben introduced the 2015 "Strengthening Families Together" during Conference, which offers AAMFT members the opportunity to give back to the profession to expand the Foundation’s support in the areas of research, education, and outreach. 

Learn more about the AAMFT Research & Education Foundation.

AAMFT Foundation: Embracing the Past and Preparing for the Future

 

Today, there is a reawakening occurring within the AAMFT Foundation. Responding to the growing demand for evidence-based research, education, and global outreach within the Marriage and Family Therapy community, the Foundation’s focus is shifting from a reactive grant-making entity to a proactive catalyst for industry advancement.

As AAMFT and its Foundation prepare for their future, they remain unwavering in their commitment to the vitality and long-term success of the mental health industry. Aligned in mission and vision, AAMFT and the Foundation see new and exciting opportunities for the organization and the global Marriage and Family Therapy community.

The AAMFT Foundation is moving methodically forward to rigorously build capacity and strategically pursue research and education funding opportunities that provide MFT stakeholders with knowledge, tools, and guidance to improve client outcomes.

To learn more about the Foundation and its initiatives, please visit http://www.aamftfoundation.org/.