The 2021 PITCH Summer Symposium

As Behavioral Health (BH) Integration in primary care settings steadily becomes the standard of care it has never been more important to build up the BH workforce with skilled new professionals ready and able to work such settings. Despite an increasing number of trainees who are interested in receiving training primary care settings, barriers continue to arise such as lack of adequate trainings sites in primary care, lack of primary care curricula for BH trainees, and a dearth of competent clinical supervisors to execute the task of training in primary care. Therefore, it is imperative to review what has been accomplished in primary care training for pre-licensure and post-licensure individuals as well as discuss future directions in training to mitigate this imbalance. This will be accomplished through two, panel presentations. The purpose of both panel presentations is to review the Program for the Integrated Training of Counselors in Healthcare (PITCH) over the past four years and to discuss how training needs to evolve in the immediate future to meet the needs of BH trainees, professionals, supervisors, and ultimately, patients seeking care in primary care.