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The need for a representative workforce to address the US behavioral health crisis

Nature Mental Health volume 4, pages 6–8 (2026) Cite this article

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A behavioral healthcare workforce — concordant in race, ethnicity, lived experience, language, and geography with the populations it serves — is urgently needed to end the US behavioral health crisis.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the contributions of the members of the Committee on Unequal Treatment Revisited: The Current State of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care that authored the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Ending Unequal Treatment report. F. K.A. was the study director of the Ending Unequal Treatment report and V.G.-R. served as a member of the committee.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, USA

    Adam Benzekri, Marco Thimm-Kaiser & Vincent Guilamo-Ramos

  2. Department of Applied Psychology, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Adam Benzekri

  3. Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Marco Thimm-Kaiser

  4. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, DC, USA

    Francis Kwadwo Amankwah

  5. Department of Health Administration and Policy, College of Public Health, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Francis Kwadwo Amankwah

  6. Institute for Policy Solutions, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, USA

    Vincent Guilamo-Ramos

Authors
  1. Adam Benzekri
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  2. Marco Thimm-Kaiser
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  3. Francis Kwadwo Amankwah
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  4. Vincent Guilamo-Ramos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adam Benzekri.

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Competing interests

V.G.R. serves as a member of the National Institute of Nursing Research’s National Advisory Council for Nursing Research and on the boards of directors for the Latino Commission on AIDS, the Power to Decide, and UnidosUS. The other authors have no competing interests to disclose.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Mental Health thanks Stuart A. Choate, Bevin Croft and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Benzekri, A., Thimm-Kaiser, M., Kwadwo Amankwah, F. et al. The need for a representative workforce to address the US behavioral health crisis. Nat. Mental Health 4, 6–8 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00561-w

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