About Dr. Amanda Barnard
Dr. Amanda Barnard received her Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Wyoming in 2014. She worked at the Wyoming Department of Family Services, providing families with ongoing case management and reunification services. She completed her Master of Social Work from the University of Wyoming in 2018 and began working with patients experiencing serious mental illness in Dickinson, ND. Dr. Barnard started to take note of deficits in healthcare delivery and decided to increase her knowledge to improve healthcare in rural areas, which inspired her to pursue the Doctor of Behavioral Health degree. While enrolled in the DBH program, she earned full independent licensure as a Clinical Social Worker in North Dakota and established her business, Kahanalo Consulting, LLC, in 2020. Her venture provides clinical and consultation services to citizens of rural North Dakota. Dr. Barnard earned her Doctor of Behavioral Health (DBH) degree from Cummings Graduate Institute for Behavioral Health Studies in 2023 and continues to provide consultation services, improving care access and experience in rural North Dakota.
Dr. Barnard’s culminating project, Integrating Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Food Pharmacy Interventions to Reduce Nutritional Deficits in Patients with Serious Mental Illness in Rural Locations, is a program designed to ease the burden of a workforce shortage in rural areas while increasing positive outcomes for patients. The project incorporates psychiatric rehabilitation services with a food pharmacy to reduce nutritional deficits in patients with a serious mental illness who are experiencing or at risk for physical disorders. By utilizing psychiatric rehabilitation in an integrated setting, the program may increase positive outcomes and increase access to care by using lower licensure staff to ease the burden of a limited higher-level workforce. Incorporating a food pharmacy has been shown to lower nutritional risks. It will reduce the stressors related to meeting basic nutritional needs while the patient is experiencing significant symptoms from behavioral health and physical disorders.
Learn more about Dr. Barnard and her culminating project by watching the videos below.
