Preparing Social Workers for Collaborative Youth Behavioral Health Practice: Findings from a Two-Cohort Pre-Post Evaluation of Interprofessional Education

Background and Purpose: Democratic practice depends on professions that can collaborate across difference, respond to community need, and advance equitable access to care. Interprofessional education (IPE) offers one pathway for preparing social workers to engage complex behavioral health challenges affecting children, adolescents, and young adults — particularly those facing structural inequities. Yet logistical and curricular barriers often limit sustained IPE implementation in graduate education. This study evaluates a HRSA-funded January-term IPE course for graduate social work students focused on child, adolescent, and young adult behavioral health. The course brought social work students into direct dialogue with a multidisciplinary group of professionals serving children, youth, and young adults experiencing marginalization. The guiding research questions ask: Do students demonstrate pre-post changes in interprofessional collaboration and related competency domains? And does the magnitude of change differ between cohorts and by disadvantage status?

Methods: This study used a two-cohort pre-post design. The 2024 and 2025 cohorts consisted of unique students, rather than the same students followed across years. Forty students contributed 80 observations, with one pretest and one posttest per student. Mixed-effects linear regression models with random intercepts for student were estimated for four interprofessional task outcomes: the ICCAS scale, attitudes toward health teams (IP), ability to carry out interprofessional tasks (A), and experience with behavioral health practice (E). Models included fixed effects for time, cohort, disadvantage status, and all two-way and three-way interactions. Standardized models were estimated to compare effect magnitude across outcomes, and student-level cluster bootstrap procedures were used to assess the robustness of key ICCAS findings.

Results: Students demonstrated significant pre-post gains in ICCAS, A, and E. For ICCAS, the 2024 no-disadvantage reference group showed a large increase from pre to post, b = 1.38, SE = 0.19, z = 7.21, p < .001, 95% CI [1.01, 1.76]. The 2025 cohort showed significantly smaller ICCAS gains than the 2024 cohort, b for post × cohort = -0.92, SE = 0.28, z = -3.35, p = .001, 95% CI [-1.47, -0.38]. Standardized ICCAS results were similarly large, b = 1.77 SD, 95% CI [1.29, 2.26], and cluster bootstrap estimates confirmed both the large pre-post effect, 95% CI [1.41, 2.14], and the smaller gain in 2025, 95% CI [-1.79, -0.58]. Attitudes toward health teams showed a different pattern: scores declined in the 2024 reference group, b = -0.39, 95% CI [-0.62, -0.16], but changed more favorably in 2025, b for post × cohort = 0.45, 95% CI [0.11, 0.78].

Conclusions and Implications: This research demonstrates that IPE can produce measurable gains in competencies specifically related to interprofessional collaboration. Furthermore, this study illustrates how social work education research can serve the common good — preparing practitioners to work across professional boundaries in ways that support equitable care for marginalized youth and families. Cohort differences further suggest that implementation conditions matter, underscoring the need for rigorous evaluation of how educational innovations are delivered across contexts. These findings support continued investment in equity-oriented IPE as a mechanism for strengthening democratic, interdisciplinary, and justice-centered behavioral health practice.