About the Minority Fellowship Program

The goal of the Minority Fellowship Program is to increase the pool of professionals qualified to provide leadership, consultation, training, and administration to public and private organizations that develop and implement programs for persons with mental or substance abuse disorders. Through this program, SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services provides grants to encourage and facilitate the doctoral and postdoctoral development of nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family therapists.


The purposes of the MFP are to facilitate the entry of students into mental health careers and increase the number of counselors; marriage and family therapists; nurses; psychologists; psychiatrists; and, social workers trained to teach, administer, and provide direct mental health and substance abuse services. SAMHSA is committed to services that are professional, are competent, and effectively meet the critical mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment needs of the Nation's population.

The goals of MFP are

• To support the pool of doctoral-level behavioral health professionals who are committed to improving services for individuals with mental or substance abuse disorders.
• To create a nucleus of behavioral health professionals who will provide leadership, consultation, training, and services administration expertise to State and community agencies, primary care provider organizations, and educational institutions for services delivered to individuals with mental or substance abuse disorders.
• To collaborate with national mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment organizations to provide training support and to enhance interdisciplinary efforts to increase quality of care and access to mental health and substance abuse services.
• To ensure that training is consistent with the latest developments in the evolving behavioral health delivery and financing mechanisms; specifically, programs should work toward training all MFP Fellows well in both mental health and substance abuse.
• To expand evaluation of services to persons with mental health and substance abuse issues.

Since its creation in 1973, the Minority Fellowship Program has helped support doctoral-level training of almost a thousand psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, and social workers. These individuals often serve in key leadership positions in mental health and substance abuse direct services, training, administration, services supervision, and services research.


SAMHSA's Minority Fellowship Program Coordinating Center is managed under contract by The MayaTech Corporation (MTC). The Coordinating Center is designed to help SAMHSA and the MFP Grantees strengthen the MFP, strengthen the tracking of the MFP Fellows, assess the impacts of the MFP.

MTC is active in various initiatives that address behavioral health. To learn more about these initiatives, please see the following Web site:

• The MayaTech Corporation [mayatech.com]