Whole-Person Care Built on Evidence, Compassion & Collaboration
Health Alliance Integrated Care was founded in 2016 with a clear conviction: that the artificial separation between behavioral health, psychiatric services, primary care, and social supports fails patients at the moment they need coordinated help the most. Our nonprofit organization was built from the ground up to dismantle these silos and deliver seamlessly integrated care to the Minneapolis metropolitan community.
Dr. Priya Sundaram, PsyD, LMFT
Executive Director & Clinical Lead
Dr. Priya Sundaram brings over eighteen years of clinical experience in behavioral health, community mental health administration, and integrated care system design to her role as founding Executive Director of Health Alliance Integrated Care. She earned her Doctor of Psychology degree from the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University, with a doctoral dissertation examining the implementation barriers to collaborative care in safety-net health systems. She holds a dual license as a Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #7283) and a clinical psychology practitioner through the Minnesota Board of Behavioral Health and Medicine.
Prior to founding Health Alliance, Dr. Sundaram served for seven years as the Behavioral Health Integration Coordinator at Hennepin County Medical Center, where she developed and implemented the county's first co-located behavioral health consultation service within primary care clinics. Her work at Hennepin County served over 6,000 patients annually and demonstrated a 34 percent reduction in behavioral health-related emergency department visits among participating primary care panels, a finding that directly informed the clinical model adopted at Health Alliance.
Dr. Sundaram serves on the Minnesota Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Advisory Council, the SAMHSA Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic Learning Community steering committee, and the Hennepin County Community Health Board. She is a frequent presenter at the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association annual conference and has published peer-reviewed articles on measurement-based care implementation in integrated settings and culturally responsive approaches to behavioral health service delivery in South Asian immigrant communities.
Credentials & Affiliations
- Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) — Minnesota School of Professional Psychology
- Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist — MN License #LMFT-7283
- Former Hennepin County Behavioral Health Integration Coordinator
- SAMHSA CCBHC Learning Community Steering Committee
- MN DHS Behavioral Health Advisory Council Member
- Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA)
- American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT)
- National Council for Mental Wellbeing
Clinical Advisory Board
Our clinical programs are guided by an interdisciplinary advisory board representing psychiatry, primary care, social work, public health, and community advocacy to ensure evidence-based standards and health equity across all services.
Marcus E. Williams, MD, MPH
Board Chair — Community Psychiatry
Board-certified psychiatrist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota. Specializes in community psychiatry, collaborative care model implementation, and psychopharmacology for co-occurring disorders. Provides clinical oversight for HAIC's psychiatric medication management protocols and prescriber training.
Linda Chen-Ramirez, PhD, LICSW
Vice Chair — Clinical Social Work
Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with expertise in health disparities research, trauma-informed organizational development, and Medicaid behavioral health policy. Former Director of Social Work at Hennepin Healthcare. Oversees HAIC's social determinants of health programming and community partnership development.
Robert Okonkwo, DO, FAAFP
Member — Primary Care Integration
Board-certified family physician and Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Chief Medical Officer at a federally qualified health center in North Minneapolis. Advises on primary care navigation protocols, chronic disease comorbidity management, and value-based care contracting for integrated behavioral health services.
Our Founding Story
Health Alliance Integrated Care was incorporated as a Minnesota 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in March 2016 following three years of planning, feasibility analysis, and stakeholder engagement led by Dr. Sundaram and a coalition of behavioral health clinicians, primary care physicians, and community health advocates who shared a common frustration with the fragmented mental healthcare system in Hennepin County.
The catalyst for our founding was a series of case reviews conducted at Hennepin County Medical Center revealing that patients with co-occurring behavioral health and chronic medical conditions were averaging 8.3 distinct providers across 4.7 unconnected organizations, with no systematic communication among their care teams. These patients experienced three times the rate of emergency department utilization, twice the rate of hospital readmission, and significantly poorer clinical outcomes compared to patients whose care was coordinated within a single integrated system.
Health Alliance opened its doors in September 2016 with a clinical staff of four: Dr. Sundaram, one additional licensed therapist, a part-time psychiatric nurse practitioner, and a care coordinator. Initial funding came from a SAMHSA Planning Grant, a Hennepin County behavioral health innovation award, and individual philanthropic contributions totaling $340,000. By the end of our first full year of operations, we had served 187 patients and demonstrated outcomes data compelling enough to secure Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic designation from SAMHSA, which remains our primary federal funding mechanism alongside fee-for-service insurance reimbursement.
Today our clinical team includes nine licensed therapists, two psychiatric prescribers, three care coordinators, two licensed social workers, one certified peer recovery specialist, and administrative staff supporting seamless operations across in-person and telehealth service delivery. We have grown strategically and deliberately, never expanding capacity faster than our ability to maintain the integrated, collaborative care model that defines our clinical identity and drives our superior outcomes.