(Radio Iowa) – Advocates are urging legislators to ensure psychologists are eligible for some of the nearly eight MILLION dollars set aside for Iowa’s Health Care Professionals Incentive program. Amy Campbell is a lobbyist for the Iowa Psychological Association. “When you guys passed that legislation you said mental health professionals and the definition of mental health professionals includes psychologists,” Campbell said. “…We were really disappointed when the governor’s office announced that psychologists were not included…Psychologists are in very high demand.”
Two-thirds of Iowa counties do not have a psychologist. Under the state’s incentive program for health care professionals, individuals who agree to work for at least five years in 36 counties considered shortage areas can apply. The awards range from 200-thousand dollars for a physician to 50-thousand dollars for a social worker who provides mental health counseling.
Threase Harms, a lobbyist for Des Moines University, says speech and language therapists are in high demand in rural areas, too, and should be included in the program. “If we’re not getting those dollars out there to support that, I don’t think it’s meeting the intended purpose of what those dollars were allocated for,” Harms says.
The funding for this program is included in a massive bill that outlines how over a billion dollars of state spending on education related programs and institutions should be allocated.
