2. Summarize the specific content gaps in available CE trainings related to providing telemental health care to military-affiliated populations and to children and adolescents.
3. Identify best practice recommendations for the essential components of a training on telehealth for mental and behavioral health clinicians.
The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally shifted the landscape of mental and behavioral healthcare, rapidly expanding the use of telehealth to increase accessibility to care for millions of Americans. However, accessibility to high-quality mental and behavioral health care remains a key challenge for military families, whose access may be reduced due to frequent moves, or remote and under-resourced duty locations. Indeed, 35% of Tricare beneficiaries lived in an area with a shortage of behavioral health care providers, and 6% live in an area with no psychiatric access at all (Bacolod et al., 2023). Despite a proliferation of trainings to guide clinicians in adjusting their practice to utilize telehealth, a gap remains in understanding the availability and quality of continuing education (CE) resources to address this learning need, particularly as it relates to military families and children. To address this gap, researchers conducted an environmental scan to systematically identify and analyze existing CE-eligible training resources focused on the effective and ethical use of telehealth to provide mental and behavioral healthcare, specifically for military-affiliated or child and adolescent populations. The research team identified 374 trainings from commercial, organizational, and military-affiliated sources (JKO, VA Train, etc). Trainings were included if they were currently offered, available in English, published after 2019, offered Continuing Education (CE) credits, provided in a virtual or asynchronous format, targeted providers, focused on mental and behavioral health, and included some content on the three essential components - Ethics (e.g. HIPAA compliance, consent and confidentiality), Safety (e.g. crisis management), and Mechanics (e.g. platform knowledge and digital etiquette). Trainings were excluded if they did not meet inclusion criteria, were not accessible to general populations, did not offer any audio-visual component, or focused on a specific clinical topic (such as PTSD or OCD) rather than an introduction to telehealth care. Application of these criteria resulted in 46 trainings included in the final sample. Data were extracted and coded to describe the training landscape and provide foundational data on content gaps essential for researchers, educators, and organizations interested in developing comprehensive evidence-based curricula for telemental health providers.