Centro Hispano of Dane County and its academic and community partners sought to improve Latino health in Dane County through improved access to mental health services. Centro Hispano of Dane County and its academic and community partners including UW-Madison developed a bilingual certificate in Counseling, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology to advance the quality of accessible linguistically and culturally competent services that support the mental health of the Latino community in Dane County. This project helped increase the number of trained professionals to serve Latino communities
The Challenge
Latino communities in Dane County face mental health challenges rooted in chronic psychosocial stress.
The severe shortage of bilingual and bicultural mental health professionals who can provide linguistically and culturally competent services has been a persistent challenge. Existing systems have not kept up with the growing linguistic diversity of Wisconsin, leaving many Latino families without equitable access to appropriate mental health care. Despite Dane County’s expanding Latino population, few training pathways exist in the Midwest to prepare clinicians with the specific forms of bilingualism and cultural fluency required to serve this community. Traditional graduate psychology programs rarely integrate linguistic competence or heritage language proficiency as professional requirements, perpetuating a workforce ill-equipped to meet community needs.
Project Goals
This project sought to improve Latino health through mental health care by:
Increasing access to quality mental health services through the creation of a certificate program for mental health providers that addresses the structural public health priority for a sufficient and capable workforce.
Providing community partners with capacity to support and evaluate Centro Hispano’s work around the social determinants of health, especially within the social and community context.
Results
Over the grant period, this project established a statewide bilingual Certified Peer Specialist (CPS) pathway and launched the UW Esperanza bilingual certificate in Counseling, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology. The program successfully graduated eight students in its first cohort and two students in the second. Esperanza trainees provided bilingual (Spanish/English) clinical services across community-based settings—including Anesis Family Therapy Center, Edgewood College, Journey Mental Health Center, Madison Metropolitan School District, The Rainbow Project, and UW Health Psychology—while the project expanded community-centered wellness and mental health literacy through initiatives such as HEART Santuario (a community of practice), Momentos de Esperanza (a podcast), and Escucha Tus Emociones (continuing education for Spanish-speaking Certified Peer Specialists). The grant also supported a five-year transformational evaluation, developed a bi-directional evaluation roadmap with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, and served as a learning hub for five UW/community-engaged evaluation projects and three UW dissertations.
Lasting Impact
The Esperanza program built a lasting pipeline of culturally and linguistically competent mental health professionals through its bilingual certificate program, Spanish-speaking Certified Peer Specialists, and bilingual Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse curricula. By embedding HEART (Healing Ethno-Racial Trauma) principles into hiring, training and program design, Centro established enduring, trauma-informed practices that strengthen care for Dane County’s Latino community.
