New Initiative Provides Psychedelics Education to BU Community.
Psilocybe cubensis, a widespread variety of psilocybin mushroom containing psychedelic compounds.
New Initiative Provides Psychedelics Education to BU Community
Danielle Haley, associate professor of community health sciences, and Karen Brouhard, senior director of the Faculty & Staff Assistance Office, were named Faculty Fellows for the University Psychedelic Education Program, part of an initiative that equips educators with evidence-based data and resources on psychedelics. This class of drugs has shown clinical promise in treating multiple mental health conditions.
After decades of strict prohibition and stigmatization in the United States, psychedelic drugs are experiencing a resurgence in interest and use, driven in part by growing research that suggests these substances have the potential to treat a variety of mental health conditions. Psychedelics also garnered national attention recently following an executive order that President Trump issued on April 18 to accelerate the development of these drugs for medical treatment—a move that psychedelic treatment experts welcomed, provided that these efforts center evidence-based training and education, as well as equitable access to these drugs.
Amid this news, two members of the Boston University community have joined an initiative that aims to prepare the future healthcare and public health workforce to engage in this emerging field with a thoughtful, ethical, and evidence-based approach.
Danielle Haley, assistant professor of community health sciences at the School of Public Health, and Karen Brouhard, senior director of the Faculty & Staff Assistance Office, have been named 2026 Faculty Fellows for the University Psychedelic Education Program (U-PEP), the academic arm of the Psychedelic Education Partnership (PEP), a nonprofit organization that aims to provide current and future healthcare professionals with the educational tools and resources necessary to incorporate psychedelic-assisted care into their professions.
“Psychedelic therapeutic use is a fascinating and complex subject that is part of a rapidly growing and changing field,” says Haley. “This program is focused on providing educators with the best available information about psychedelics, and training them to share this knowledge and incorporate it into their curricula in a way that is grounded in evidence.”
U-PEP, which began in 2022 as a joint pilot program between Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania’s schools of nursing and social work, spurred the launch of PEP, a national fellowship program with more than 170 participating faculty members across more than 30 states. Haley and Brouhard are the first BU faculty members to participate in this initiative and they join a cohort of 82 other faculty from 45 US institutions working in public health, social work, medicine, and psychology, among other fields.
The two-year fellowship will include both in-person and virtual training sessions, as well as guided mentorship, activities with other educators and within the community, and a shared digital hub of resources.
As a clinical social worker, Brouhard says she was drawn to the field of psychedelics by promising research that has shown the healing benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy for mental health conditions such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use—conditions that can be resistant to standard treatments.
“Over the past few years, I’ve taken a deeper dive, including training as a facilitator, and it’s had a strong influence on how I think about this work,” Brouhard says. “One of my biggest takeaways is the importance of approaching this field through a public health lens—centering wellness, harm reduction, and equity, not just clinical outcomes. There’s a great deal of potential here, but also a responsibility to be thoughtful about how this work is developed and integrated.”
Known for inducing expanded states of consciousness, psychedelics are a class of hallucinogenic substances that alter people’s thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. Psilocybin, which is found in “magic mushrooms,” is among the most commonly used psychedelic substances in the US, consumed at least once by about 12 percent of adults, according to a 2024 RAND report. Other drugs that are being used for psychedelic effects in clinical and community settings include LSD, MDMA (ecstasy), DMT and ketamine.
Psychedelics have a rich history of use among Indigenous populations for healing and cultural purposes. They were also widely used during the counterculture movement in the 1960s before the federal government classified them as Schedule 1 drugs in the early 1970s, designated for substances that are considered to have a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use.
Now, with growing public acceptance and clinical interest—combined with persistent gaps in effective care for many mental health disorders—major industry-funded clinical trials have skyrocketed for psychedelics. These trials have produced promising data around the therapeutic benefits of these drugs (administered under clinical supervision) that has led individual states and cities to decriminalize these drugs or legalize them for therapeutic use. The Food and Drug Administration has also issued a “breakthrough therapy” designation for several psychedelics, which enables expedited development and review of drugs that show substantial therapeutic value over existing treatments.
“Psychedelic-assisted therapies offer important possibilities, not just for addressing mental health conditions, but for shifting toward a more holistic understanding of healing,” Brouhard says.
Haley and Brouhard plan to integrate the knowledge and resources they acquire from U-PEP into their teachings at SPH and across the university. Haley has taught courses on substance use and harm reduction, including Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use: People, Populations and Policies (SB785), as well as Substance Use among Minoritized and Marginalized Populations (MC783).
“I’m really excited for the opportunity to further develop a psychedelics module that I use in the SPH785 course in a way that truly reflects contemporary issues around psychedelic use in research and in public health practice,” she says.
Brouhard has lectured multiple times in SPH classes, including Haley’s SB785 course; in addition to these lectures, she also plans to offer in-service training and guest lectures in classes across the university at the School of Social Work, Wheelock College, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and College of Arts & Sciences.
“Moving forward, it will be critical to ensure this work is guided by strong evidence and a clear commitment to equity, so access and implementation are both responsible and inclusive,” Brouhard says.