Addressing Health Care Disparities and COVID-19: Mental Illness Prevention in Communities of Color

As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in March 2020, the New York State Office of Mental Health received funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to implement the agency’s Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program statewide. Because COVID-19 infections were disproportionately affecting minority communities of color, engagement strategies that prioritized contracting with community agencies that were already well established in the most highly affected racial-ethnic minority neighborhoods were used. This approach to outreach successfully made engagement and counseling support available to Black and Hispanic citizens, at levels significantly exceeding their proportional representation in the state population. These efforts identify an opportunity for a postpandemic paraprofessional workforce to address general medical health and mental health inequities in underresourced racial-ethnic minority communities.