Am J Psychiatry 1994; 151:1181-1187
Copyright © 1994 by American Psychiatric Association
A community-based public-academic liaison program
AB Santos, JC Ballenger, JJ Bevilacqua, JJ Zealberg, TG Hiers, S McLeod-Bryant, PA Deci and LJ Rames
Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Charleston 29425.
OBJECTIVE: The authors discuss obstacles and incentives associated with
successful community-based public-academic liaison activities and
illustrate their conclusions by describing their public-academic liaison
program, which received the American College of Psychiatrists' first annual
Award for Creativity in Psychiatric Education. METHOD: The first 8 years of
a state/university collaboration are described in which the parties
involved first developed a variety of innovative services designed to fill
specific gaps in the public service delivery system and subsequently
integrated academic research and training components. RESULTS: The
carefully planned and monitored process resulted in the exponential growth
of interest in public sector work, the realization of the university's
primary goals of developing high quality training and research sites, a
substantial increase in the number of graduates accepting positions in the
public sector, several projects funded by the National Institute of Mental
Health, and two national awards. CONCLUSIONS: These collaborations
illustrate the highly complementary relationship of public-academic liaison
activities and their potential capacity to improve access to services,
substantially improve the quality of these services, generate extramural
support for services research, and increase the number of well-trained
professionals in the public sector.
