I’ve never accomplished anything worthwhile on my own. Now, at a time when science and healthcare are both under siege, collaboration is not only desirable, it’s becoming vital to us as individuals and to our profession. Change is being forced on academia and the healthcare professions. Federal funding cuts have impacted psychology training (Lostutter, 2025). Thousands of federal jobs have been lost or remain at risk, including health care positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs (U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, 2025). Billions of dollars of mental health grants were recently terminated. Although they were restored a day later (Mann, 2026), a great deal of uncertainty remains about the future of research in the field.
Accordingly, I was very pleased to learn that Division 18 was planning a special issue of Public Service Psychology on the theme of collaboration. I’d like to share some thoughts on its relevance to public sector/service psychologists, starting with a consideration of three collaborative initiatives of which Division 18 has been a part. My hope here is to inspire some of you to get involved with issues you believe in, find partners, and to be proactive in creating a desirable future.
Keeping our heads down and waiting until the crisis passes may be a good survival tactic, but it’s not a strategy.
The Division 18 – Alliant International University Partnership
This began in 2000 and continued until 2010. During that time, funds were raised to enable more than 20 Division 18 members to obtain the MSCP degree, the academic prerequisite to prescribing psychotropic medication. For more information, read Randy Taylor, PhD, and Steve Tulkin, PhD, article (Taylor & Tulkin, 2015).
The North American Correctional and Criminal Justice Psychology Conference (NACCJPC)
Co-founded in 2007 by three division members, Bob Morgan PhD, Jeremy Mills PhD, and Daryl Kroner PhD, in partnership with the criminal justice section of the Canadian Psychological Association, it is the most enduring Division 18 collaboration I know of. The conference is held every four years, and the next one is scheduled for June 2027 in Victoria, British Columbia. NACCJPC is now the foremost conference of its kind in the world.
Reversing the Federal Bureau of Prisons internship program withdrawal from the APPIC Match, 2025
Psychologists can collaborate out of professional self-interest as Division 18 did earlier this year with the advocacy office of the American Psychological Association (Evans, 2025; McGuire, 2025). The Federal Bureau of Prisons was initially forced to withdraw from the APPIC match program, but an ad-hoc group within Division 18 worked with APA’s Advocacy Office and convinced DOJ to reverse the decision.
All of these initiatives started with an idea followed by partnering and then collective action.
Here are some other ways that public sector/service psychologists could get involved
Collaborate with Division 55 (Society for Prescribing Psychology) again and with other innovative healthcare organizations
Yes, collaborate again. The public sector is where the prescriptive authority (RxP) initiative began, and where many of those psychologists who actually prescribe psychotropic medication have practiced. Division 18 supported Division 55 in its early years, but that alliance languished, to the detriment of both divisions, in my opinion. The RxP initiative has moved forward, but very slowly, and Division 55 needs Division 18 because prescribing psychologists need training sites and a much more efficient pipeline from education to practice. No division is more involved in practicum, internship and postdoctoral training than ours is. Unfortunately, Division 55 doesn’t really understand how much they could benefit from linking up with us once more, so I hope our leadership will reach out to Division 55
(I’m a member of that division, too), and if they don’t, other members should. Collaboration can start anywhere.
The Coalition for Technology in Behavioral Science (CTiBS)(2024) was originally intended to be an APA division, an interdisciplinary platform and communications hub to promote innovation in behavioral science supported by electronic technology. The division’s effort failed, but the group reconstituted itself as a private non-profit organization. (Full disclosure: I was one of the CTiBS co-founders.) Now it’s thriving and publishes an online journal. With artificial intelligence evolving by leaps and bounds, this organization has the potential to help psychology research and practice stay relevant in the 21st century. Check out this and other psychology groups involved in collaborative e-healthcare.
Collaborate to advocate
Collaborate with and for ourselves. We’ve been trying for years to get a third seat on the Council of Representatives, and if every one of us took the time to vote all 10 of their 18 apportionment ballots for Division 18 we would. We could increase the volume of our voice on Council by 50 percent with that additional seat at a time when being heard is important–and maybe more difficult–than ever.
Under revised federal borrowing limits, psychology doctoral students and those in several other professional programs can take out up to $200,000 in loans, but as of this writing, limits for nursing and social work students will be set at lower levels (Kenen, 2025; McNair, 2025). Psychologists can join with our healthcare colleagues to lobby for the higher limits. Someday they’ll return the favor.
Something caught my eye in researching an article I was writing about homelessness: An amicus brief filed by 57 Social Scientists with Published Research on Homelessness in the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson (2024) Supreme Court case last year. It’s the one that permitted municipalities to criminalize homelessness. I thought it was wonderful that a group of academics formed themselves into an advocacy group on behalf of the most marginalized, powerless people in our society.
Division 18 members could use their subject matter expertise on behalf of innumerable worthy causes in this way.
Interdisciplinary collaboration for research
We can pool limited grant dollars and collaborate with other disciplines to conduct more robust and replicable research and help end the replication crisis. For example, a recent literature review (Walton & Elliott, 2025) of cognitive-behavioral therapy programs offered in British and Welsh prison and probation services over more than a decade revealed only a “small statistically significant mean reductive effect on general reoffending” (p. 910). However, there was scant mention of obstacles participants might have faced in the community, e.g., those generally associated with poverty or the reluctance of employers to hire ex-offenders, that could have systematically suppressed more positive results of these interventions.
Much of what we do is congruent with the goals of social workers and other community-based healthcare providers, and with those who formulate and implement public policy. Interdisciplinary teamwork could permit more reliable, fine-grained follow-up analysis to identify potentially confounding variables. Community colleagues might be eager to work with psychologists who practice in facilities like prisons and hospitals to which they would otherwise have limited access. Economist team members could assess the dollar costs and benefits of these interventions, perhaps improving the programs and the arguments for continued funding.
I hope some readers will be inspired to lead an advocacy initiative on behalf of nursing or homeless persons, take responsibility for getting that third Council seat for Division 18, or initiate another collaborative effort to benefit public healthcare. Collaboration is empowering. For years, we psychologists have been admonishing ourselves to get out of our professional silos and there’s never been a better time than now to walk that talk. At this fraught moment, collaboration can push back and move us forward.