It’s called the Kansas Behavioral Health Center of Excellence, but don’t go looking for it on a map.

The center isn’t a brick-and-mortar building but rather a fairly new consortium of behavioral health care providers and educational institutions across the state. And for several reasons, it’s focusing its early efforts on Wichita and south-central Kansas.

What that’s meant for KU School of Medicine-Wichita is the establishment of two new fellowship programs — one for child and adolescent psychiatry and one for addiction medicine.

“They support the majority of the costs of these two fellowships,” said Matthew Byerly, M.D., professor and acting chair in the school’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. “What we provide is contributions toward their mission of enhancing the mental health specialist workforce in Kansas.”

The child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship graduated three fellows this year and has two fellows in the current first- and second-year classes, while the addiction medicine fellowship launched with one fellow this year and plans to expand to two fellows per year.

“For the Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program, we’re anticipating 10 graduates by June of 2028,” Byerly said. “There were only five (child and adolescent psychiatrists) in the Wichita area before the program started, so we’ll triple the number in less than five years.”

The Center of Excellence operates under the auspices of the Association of Community Mental Health Centers of Kansas, whose members include Comcare of Sedgwick County and 25 other mental health centers. The center has its own 15-member board of directors, including representatives of KU Wichita, Wichita State University, Friends University, Newman University and Ascension Via Christi from this area.

Kyle Kessler, executive director of the Association of Community Mental Health Centers of Kansas, is chair of the center’s board. Michelle Ponce is the center’s acting director and only staff member. She’s actually associate director of the association, which donates a portion of her time to the center.

Kessler said the center started coming together about 1 1/2 years ago as a result of conversations between various stakeholders in the mental health field.

“There is a national shortage of psychiatrists and other mental health specialists that’s been pretty well documented and recognized,” Kessler said, adding that Kansas is no exception.

For decades, the Menninger Clinic in Topeka had been the state’s pipeline for psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and other mental health specialists, Kessler said. That pipeline ran dry when the clinic moved to Houston in 2003.

“Really what we wanted to do is recreate the Menninger Clinic in aggregate, and that included KU Wichita,” Kessler said. “It’s taking something that you need and recreating it without being committed to exactly what you had before. You just want the same results, producing a high-quality workforce with Kansas training and Kansas values.”

Kansas lawmakers appear to like the center’s approach. The Kansas Legislature approved $5.8 million for the center in its first year. In addition to the KU Wichita fellowships, that money funded 10 scholarships in Wichita State University’s addiction counseling program retention funding for 192 nursing faculty members at 20 community and technical colleges.

In its second year, in addition to continued funding of KU Wichita and WSU, the center plans to fund family therapy and addiction counselor programs at Friends University as well as the social work master's program at Newman University. The center is also helping reestablish the Wichita Psychology Internship Program, which provides paid psychology internships at Comcare, Prairie View and South Central Mental Health Counseling Center.

In legislative testimony, Ponce said the center “strategically chose to focus on the Wichita area, for a variety of reasons, but not the least of which is the new state hospital scheduled to open in early 2027, which will have its own staffing needs. In addition, the Wichita community is somewhat unique for the array of engaged partners from both the provider/service delivery system and higher education.”

The 104-bed South Central Regional Mental Health Hospital is located at 3901 S. Custer, west of Meridian in south Wichita.

In an interview, Ponce said the center’s goal is not only producing more mental health care specialists “but ensuring they stay here in Kansas.”

KU Wichita’s child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship is a two-year program while the addiction medicine fellowship is for one year. Byerly said the center’s funds pay the salaries of fellows as well as portions of the salaries of faculty and coordinators who support the program.

“They are absolutely critical for these programs existing and being sustainable,” he said.

Above, from top: Matthew Byerly, Kyle Kessler and Michelle Ponce

Learn more

Explore the new Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program and the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program at KU School of Medicine-Wichita.