By then, he’d spent more than 10 years in the Bay Area and was ready for a move, if not a career change. He was hired as the cultural competency officer for San Bernardino County’s behavioral health department and spent the next three years there.
He spent most of his time connecting and meeting with community and ethnic organizations representing the Latino, African American, Asian, Native American and LGBTQ communities. His office had 12 different cultural committees, and most of them met monthly.
“I was constantly in the community representing the department, even on weekends,” he says. On behalf of his agency, Momoh gave support to community groups as they hosted events that often included their own unique traditions of wellness and healing.
“A lot of communities have their own community-defined practices that bring them healing or gives them hope,” Momoh says. “We try to encourage them, and we also say: ‘Celebrate your culture, and at the same time, the county does offer mental health services including therapy.’”
Placing mental health programs in health clinics and community centers has advantages, he says. “We want to embed mental health within those programs, like a one-stop shop,” he says. “If you have locations that only provide mental health services, people might hesitate to use them because of stigma. However, if it’s embedded within a cultural center, a community resource center that offers an array of social services, people may be more open.”
As the primary liaison to the communities of San Bernardino, Momoh also was tasked to hear concerns and complaints from different groups. At the time, an Asian American group “was expressing frustration that the department wasn’t being responsive to their needs,” he recalls. He began meeting with its representatives and drafted a proposal to the county’s behavioral health director for a pilot program that would address some of their needs.
“She gave me her blessing, and just like that, we had a mental health program at an Asian American community center,” Momoh says. The department provided funds that enabled the community center to bring on clinicians and offer psychotherapy to users of the community center. The program continued even after the pilot period ended, he says.
In the years since, Momoh has continued his tour of county behavioral health departments. He spent three years in San Francisco, directing the county’s $34 million Mental Health Services Act program and later leading its Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education. When he left, he was honored with a Public Health Hero award from his old department. Since the end of last year, he has served as Alameda County’s deputy director of behavioral health services.
For half of his short tenure in Alameda, he’s been dealing with the realities imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s a lot,” Momoh says. “Some days, it seems like we’re in crisis mode, and by midweek, you can feel drained.”
Fortunately, he has lots of motivation — and a long history of overcoming obstacles.
