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Question:
Greetings,

I am finishing my doctorate in clinical psychology, but I want to shift my focus to community psychology. What additional education and training do I need to pursue to change my career focus? Thank you!
Answer:

     Welcome to a wonderful new world! We hope your transition is happy, smooth, and fulfilling. And please know you are not alone; a great many community psychologists started out as clinicians.
     In our experience, there are no set rules for making this kind of shift. Some good news is that a number of the same basic concepts and methods will transfer over from clinical to community psych. The extent of this will depend in part upon the type of clinical education you received.
     As for additional education and training, while we’re not going to send you to another Ph.D. program, you do have options. For one example, you could enter a master’s program to complement your clinical degree, at least some of which you might be able to take online, at your own pace.  Or you could check out the possibilities for a community psych postdoc. Or, you could instead pick up additional courses and workshops that particularly interest you as you go along.  Or, you could wait, do nothing formal or structured for a little while, check out the local employment and cultural landscape, and let your direction be guided by your conclusions. Local conditions are likely to vary, as will the requirements and standards of particular employers you may engage with.
     There are some specific resources that might aid you as you proceed. To familiarize yourself a bit more about community psychology, you might want to check the Divisional website, https://scra27.org,  and look around,  if you haven’t done so already.   The section on education at https://scra27.org/what-we-do/education/ provides some more specific resources, and a tab under that section, https://scra27.org/what-we-do/education/academic-programs/ will link you to a listing of community psychology graduate programs in the U.S. and beyond.   
      We should add as a footnote that the Community Tool Box itself offers some training materials, such as a multi-volume training curriculum on core competencies in community work. You can find more details at https://ctb.ku.edu/en/training-curriculum.
       We hope this much may be helpful to you. Thank you for writing to us – and who knows but that we may be reading about your own accomplishments in not too very long! We send all best wishes for success.

Question Date: Mon, 07/25/2022