Strengthening the Behavioral Health Workforce

In more than a decade, the Hawai‘i Psychology Internship Consortium (HI-PIC) has trained nearly 100 psychology interns across four islands, helping the state earn national recognition for building a sustainable behavioral health workforce.

With more than half of its graduates choosing to remain in Hawai‘i to live and work, the Hawai’i Psychology Internship Consortium is strengthening the state’s capacity to meet its growing mental health needs. “Even prior to the internship, I always felt that public mental health in Hawai‘i was a very significant need,” said Dr. Canaan Higa, a past HI-PIC intern. “Now that I’m in the field, though, I just did not understand how big of a need it really was.”

In 2008, the Hawai‘i Behavioral Health Services administration partnered with the WICHE Behavioral Health Program (BHP) to conduct a statewide workforce assessment. The results showed that much of the state, particularly its rural regions, were designated as professional workforce shortage areas. In response, the Hawai‘i Departments of Education, Health, and Corrections and Rehabilitation partnered with the WICHE BHP to launch HI-PIC. The goal of the consortium was to address the state’s longstanding shortage of behavioral health professionals.

Dr. Higa, now a clinical lead for the department’s Family Court Liaison Branch, earned his psychology doctorate from Pacific University in Oregon. Although he earned a degree out of state, Higa decided to complete his HI-PIC internship in Kaua‘i, the community where he was born and raised. HI-PIC’s support in the transition from trainee to professional is why Dr. Higa decided to stay for his postdoctoral internship. Kaua‘i is also where he was able to reignite his passion for juvenile forensic psychology. He attributes the success of HI-PIC to retain providers in Hawai‘i to the program’s unique ability to fit the individual needs of interns.

“I think the biggest gap that HI-PIC helped me bridge was during my internship where I was given opportunities to actually make clinical decisions and take full ownership of them,” he said. “It was a significant step that made the transition from student to professional much less daunting.”

Since its initial cohort of five interns, HI-PIC has expanded to training 10 interns a year across nine sites. This has resulted in 10 years of accreditation standing with the American Psychological Association (APA), the longest term recognized by the body. In that time, HI-PIC successfully trained 99 interns across four islands — O‘ahu, Hawai‘i Island, Maui, and Kaua’i. After their first year of internship, more than half of students decide to stay to live and work in Hawai‘i, and just under half continue to stay in state during the second year after completion of the internship. In fact, of 14 faculty members of HI-PIC, nine are former interns like Dr. Higa, who now train and educate the next generation of mental health professionals.

“Although the need is still there, I have been impressed with the quality and passion of the providers we have in our system and they do good work with their clients,” he said. “Through my work as a practicum supervisor for the graduate psychology programs in Hawai’i, I am encouraged by the number of future providers joining our field as well as their passion for serving the Hawaiian community.”

This story was originally published in the FY 2025 WICHE Annual Report.