This Web site is a component of the SAMHSA Health Information Network
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This Web site is a component of the SAMHSA Health Information Network. |
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Center for Mental Health Services
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| House | Senate | |
| Performance Partnership Block Grant | $13.4 | no increase |
| Children's Mental Health Services | $5.1 | no increase |
| PATH | $3.0 | $2.0 |
| Protection and Advocacy | no increase | $1.0 |
| FY 98 | President's FY 99 Request | House Markup | Senate Markup | |
| Knowledge Development and Application |
58 | 58 | 58 | 58 |
| Children's Mental Health Services |
73 | 73 | 78 | 73 |
| Protection and Advocacy | 22 | 22 | 22 | 23 |
| PATH | 23 | 23 | 26 | 23 |
| Mental Health performance Partnership Block Grants |
275 | 275 | 289 | 275 |
| Total CMHS | 451 | 451 | 473 | 454 |
CMHS Director Bernard S. Arons, M.D., received a lifetime achievement award from the International Association of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services. He was honored for his dedication to and leadership in improving the lives of people with mental illness.
Dr. Arons delivered a number of speeches at mental health conferences throughout the country. Among them were remarks to members of the American Psychiatric Association at their Annual Meeting in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in May; a speech at the Third Strategic Planning Retreat for the Comprehensive Community Health Services for Children and Their Families Program in Washington, D.C. in July; and a speech entitled "Audacious Imagination: Future of Mental Health Services" at the American Psychological Association's 106th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California in August.
Dr. Arons also delivered opening remarks at the Training Institutes sponsored by the National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health, a CMHS technical assistance center, in Orlando, Florida, in June, and at the National Dialogue on Co-Occurring Mental Health and Substance Abuse Disorders, sponsored by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors and the National Association of State Drug Abuse Directors in Washington, D.C. in June.
In addition to participating in numerous public speaking engagements, Dr. Arons was interviewed for both live and print audiences. For example, Dr. Arons was the sole guest on the Armstrong Williams Show, a cable call-in program that reaches approximately 300,000 viewers in 40 States. The hour-long episode dealt with the cause and prevention of suicide. The high caliber of Dr. Arons' answers and the exceptional call-in response prompted Mr. Williams to invite Dr. Arons to return for another interview during Mental Health Awareness Week in October.
In the wake of the Capital Hill shootings, Dr. Arons was interviewed by U.S. News & World Report magazine (circulation 2.3 million) and the local CBS affiliate WUSA-TV 9. The interviews provided Dr. Arons with an opportunity to educate the public about paranoid schizophrenia and the links between mental illness and violence.
Thomas H. Bornemann, Ed.D., Deputy Director, gave a presentation on the Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health at the 106th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, in August.
Associate Director for Medical Affairs
Melvyn R. Haas, M.D., Associate Director for Medical Affairs, and Paolo del Vecchio, Consumer Affairs Specialist, gave a presentation on the importance of dialogue between consumers and providers at The National Alliance on Mental Illness's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in July.
The HIV/AIDS Steering Committee met in Washington, D.C., in July. Officers from the 11 sites, representatives of partner agencies, and other attendees addressed the HIV/AIDS Mental Health Services Demonstration Program and mental health needs of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.
Over the next several months, the HIV/AIDS Mental Health Services Demonstration Program will formally begin to disseminate findings about the mental health needs of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. This knowledge will shed new light on approaches to providing integrated care to persons with HIV/AIDS. Policy makers, health care providers, and others who serve this population will be able to learn from the experiences of the 11 grantees involved in the program and replicate the most promising approaches in their own communities.
The Medical Affairs Office in October will convene a group of psychiatrists to look at the implementation and effects of downsizing in psychiatry residency training programs.
Office of Managed Care
The Office of Managed Care initiated several new projects. These include the following:
This project will examine the professional literature, analyze options, and provide recommendations to States on the design and implementation of mental health and substance abuse benefits within the new State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The analytic report will discuss the most effective methods, settings, and treatment modalities for reaching these children and for ensuring continuity of care; provide a framework for estimating costs associated with specific benefits, including rate setting methodology and case rates; and recommend strategies for adequate coverage of MH/SA services under SCHIP.
This project will provide two independent policy analyses related to coverage under Medicaid managed care. Project One, "Court-Ordered or Involuntary Treatment Under Managed Care," will explore the consequences of including or excluding court-ordered mental health and substance abuse treatment in the scope of services covered by contracts between managed care organizations (MCOs) and State Medicaid agencies. Project Two, "School-based/School-linked Mental Health Services Under Managed Care," will explore options and models for these mental health services within managed care, as well as financing and reimbursement issues which affect the viability and expansion of these services. The study will examine States that include school-based/school-linked mental health services in State managed care contracts and will explore issues in managed care for maintaining and expanding these types of services.
Three reports will be produced under this project. The first will update an annotated bibliography of mental health and substance abuse (MH/SA) services offered in managed care plans. The second will present focus group results from employers who provide generous MH/SA benefits. The third will present focus group results from managed care organizations concerning managed care contracting.
This project will identify and coordinate the ongoing work related to managed mental health care provided by State Mental Health Agencies, the National Association of State Mental Health Directors, and the CMHS Office of Managed Care at the State and Federal levels. A major purpose of this project will be to improve coordination of these activities with the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors through an identical project that is being funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT).
In addition, CMHS and CSAT will release on September 15, 1998, the results of a major study of national expenditures for mental health, alcohol, and other drug abuse treatment. This study, which is the first major update of spending estimates since those published by Rice et al., in 1990, is the result of a collaboration between the managed care offices in the two centers. Estimates will be presented by payer and type of provider for 1996, and trends since 1986 will be identified. The study also provides estimates that allow direct comparison with those published by the the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for all health care.
Major findings from the study will be published in the September/October issue of Health Affairs. A full report will be available from CSAT and CMHS in October. Unlike previous studies, CMHS and CSAT intend to update these estimates annually to ensure that information on national spending for MH/SA services remains current.
Jeffrey A. Buck, Ph.D., Director, addressed the third Annual Conference of the National Association of County Behavioral Health Directors in Portland, Oregon, in July.
Office of External Liaison
Curtis R. Austin, Office of External Liaison (OEL) Director, in July attended the National Association of Black Journalists Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.
To ensure that the media and the general public have access to and receive information on mental health and mental illness in a timely fashion, the CMHS OEL established a "beat" system. A personal public affairs specialist has been assigned to each program office. The public affairs specialist will stay abreast of major initiatives within his or her assigned office/division and take a proactive role in getting that information out to the media.
OEL also recently developed an electronic log system for media inquiries. This system will enhance OEL's ability to analyze the nature and number of incoming media requests.
From June through August, OEL coordinated several major media interviews. In June, Melvyn Haas, M.D., Associate Director for Medical Affairs, was interviewed on bipolar disorder by the Boston Phoenix. The Boston Phoenix has a circulation of approximately 218,000. In addition, Jeffrey A. Buck, Ph.D., Director of the CMHS Office of Managed Care, provided information to the Los Angeles Times on insurance parity. The Los Angeles Times has a daily circulation of 1.02 million readers.
The OEL Consumer Affairs Office in June sponsored its second Regional Consumer Meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. This meeting solicited grassroots consumers' views on pressing needs and on needed responses. Representatives from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska identified the top concerns as being self-help/consumer operated services, employment/loss of benefits, housing, medications, external grievance procedures, consumer training/education, crisis/emergency services, and meaningful participation in State planning councils.
A cross-agency group established in March to address President Clinton's directive to implement the Consumer Bill of Rights submitted a work-plan in July to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Administrator, Nelba Chavez, Ph.D. The work-plan proposes four overarching goals, various objectives, and numerous activities to implement the Consumer Bill of Rights throughout SAMHSA programs and activities. The goals are to establish a joint strategy for implementation with internal and external substance abuse and mental health communities, ensure that SAMHSA staff and its constituent community have the information and understanding needed to execute it, establish policies and materials to promote compliance, and encourage SAMHSA grantees and contractors to comply. The group sought recommendations from more than 30 external constituents such as providers, consumers, national organizations, and State program directors.
Building upon the success of the 1997 "Consumers and Psychiatrists in Dialogue" conference, a similar meeting in August was sponsored among 20 consumer leaders and psychologists in Washington, D.C. These meetings are designed to foster partnerships between consumers and practitioners; to review what hinders and assists recovery; and to explore ways to improve both clinical practice and the overall mental health service delivery system. A full report will be available on this meeting.
In collaboration with the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, CMHS sponsored the first-ever meeting of older adult mental health consumers. The goals of this gathering were to determine the self-identified needs of older adults, to explore mechanisms to strengthen networks, and to improve ways of communicating these concerns. A complete report of this meeting also will soon be made available.
Office of Policy, Planning, and Administration
Anita Sweetman and Sue Stanley, who participated on SAMHSA's Administrative Team, received the Secretary's Award for Distinguished Service "in recognition of the team effort to reengineer and streamline SAMHSA's administrative processes and procedures." Donna E. Shalala, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, thanked the members for their commitment, leadership, and contributions to the Department.
Division of Knowledge Development and Systems Change
Michael J. English, J.D., Director, received the Secretary's Award for Distinguished Service from Donna E. Shalala, Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services. He received this honor for "visionary and dynamic leadership in managing new knowledge development and application initiatives to improve services for adults with serious mental illnesses and children with serious emotional disturbances."
Child, Adolescent, and Family Branch
Grantees of the "Circles of Care" for American Indian/Alaska Native communities (either federally recognized tribes or urban Indian programs), will plan, design, and assess the feasibility of implementing a culturally appropriate model of mental health services for children with serious emotional disturbances. This 3-year project is a collaboration among CMHS; the Indian Health Service; and the Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. This program will also address the problem of this ethnic group's over-representation in the juvenile justice system, suicide attempts in jails, and gang activity. Approximately nine sites will be funded.
Judith Katz-Levy, M.Ed., Senior Policy Analyst, in June gave a presentation on "Children with Serious Emotional Disturbances/Substance Abuse" at a the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services seminar on children with disabilities in Baltimore, Maryland.
Community Support Programs Branch
The Evaluation Center at the Human Services Research Institute, a CMHS technical assistance center under this Division, has developed a number toolkits: "Toolkit for Performance Measurement Using the MHSIP Consumer-Oriented Report Card" and "Implementing Process and Outcome Evaluations." The Evaluation Center also has conducted nearly 100 consultations on topics including performance measurement, outcomes instrument selection, research design, managed care evaluation, statistical analysis, and evaluation use.
In addition, the publication Outlook, which is published jointly by the Evaluation Center and the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute, has been distributed to nearly 3,000 users. The 15-page summer issue was on performance measurement systems.
The National GAINS Center for Individuals with Co-Occurring Disorders in the Criminal Justice System, a CMHS technical assistance center, has sponsored three topical meetings during the last quarter. The meetings addressed: adolescent girls in the juvenile justice system; a regional forum for localities developing targeted women's services in jails; and a meeting co-sponsored by the GAINS Center and the Soros Foundation on "The Implications of Managed Behavioral Health Care for Persons with Co-Occurring Disorders in the Justice System." Reports generated by each meeting will be available shortly through the GAINS Center.
Division of Program Development, Special Populations, and Projects
Division Director Brian Flynn, Ed.D., an internationally recognized authority in the field of disaster and emergency mental health, will be in Nairobi, Kenya, September 1-15, 1998. In the aftermath of the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Dr. Flynn has been asked to gather information, provide guidance for immediate local actions, and provide a report with recommendations for both long- and short-term intervention, training, and education in the psychological sequelae of this event.
In another arena, CMHS is providing technical and material assistance to the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network (SPAN). SPAN is a grassroots, nonprofit organization that is sponsoring the Suicide Prevention Conference in Reno, Nevada, in October. Robert DeMartino, M.D., Associate Director for the CMHS Program in Trauma, Terrorism, and Systems Consultation, sits as liaison on the conference steering committee. Among the conference's supporters are Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., who will provide closing remarks at the conference, and Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), who was instrumental in the passage of Senate Resolution 84 which recognized suicide as a national problem and declared suicide prevention a national priority.
Material support from CMHS will allow State and county mental health officials to attend the conference. It also will help to produce and disseminate guidelines and other instructional materials resulting from the conference, as well as to develop a best practices synthesis regarding the prevention of youth suicide.
Emergency Services and Disaster Relief Branch
This CMHS Branch continues to be involved in multiple disaster crisis counseling programs in Colorado, Florida, Guam, Iowa, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and West Virginia. A number of CMHS disaster mental health publications are under major revision. This Branch also coordinates its activities with numerous components of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Departments of Justice and Education, and The American Red Cross.
Collaboration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a stress management program for disaster relief workers continues, and a refresher training program was held in August at the Emergency Management Institute.
Special Programs Development Branch
Elzbieta Gozdziak, Ph.D., Public Health Advisor, and John Tuskan, R.N., participated in the Iraqi Refugee Initiative Meeting in Michigan in May. The meeting's goals were to provide a venue for Iraqi refugees to share their resettlement experiences, explore ways to improve cultural orientation and resettlement processes, and build on the strengths of this community and plan for the future.
Mr. Tuskan also gave a keynote presentation on "Refugees and Refugee Mental Health: The Spiritual Dimension" at the second International Islamic Unity Conference in Washington, D.C., in August.
Dr. Gozdziak and Mr. Tuskan also will present a paper entitled "Violence as a Political Instrument: A Public Health Perspective" at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia, December 2-6. Dr. Gozdziak and Mr. Tuskan will use torture victims as a case example to demonstrate the effects of violence-both immediate and long-term-on individual victims, their families and community members, and on society at large. They also will briefly discuss approaches to assessment and treatment of torture survivors to help demonstrate the costs (both human suffering and financial) of this form of violence.
At this same meeting, Dr. Gozdziak will present the paper "Violence, Racism, and Population Dynamics." This paper will examine the increasingly prominent role of anthropology and public health in providing alternative insights into the area of violence. Various kinds of violence-including physical, structural, and political-both within the U.S. and in international communities will be examined. Some of the topics included in this discussion will be interethnic violence, the interplay between population dynamics and group identity with collective violence, the impact of gun-detection technologies on community and police relations, and the fragile balance between residents' desire for a safe community and personal freedom and civil rights. Program and policy recommendations, as well as suggestions for further research, will be provided.
Division of State and Community Systems Development
Protection and Advocacy Branch
This Branch in May helped sponsor the 21st Annual Conference of the Advocacy and Client Assistance Program Training in Washington, D.C. Representatives from Protection and Advocacy programs across the country gained valuable tools to help them improve the quality of their services.
In addition, CMHS plans to design and produce a poster to help end stigma against mental illness and people who have mental illnesses. To that end, a focus group of consumers of mental health services was convened in August. The focus group provided their perspective on what the message of the poster should be and how that message should be presented.
State Planning and Systems Development Branch
To fulfill its mission, CMHS must attend, not only to today's immediate mental health services needs, it must also look at emerging trends to determine, anticipate, and plan for future services needs. This Branch funded the Project on the Future of Mental Health Services, which is designed to bring together some of the most forward-thinking mental health policy makers, researchers, providers, consumers, and advocates in the country today. They gathered to identify the emerging environmental, political, legal, treatment, social, cultural, healthcare, and economic trends in the mental health service delivery system. A discussion of a preliminary report on this project is an agenda item for this Advisory Council meeting.
Survey and Analysis Branch
A new edition of the statistical guide, Mental Health, United States, 1998, will be available in late fall. Divided into six sections-current context, assessment of outcomes, assessment of performance, key factors in managed care, population bases analysis, and national statistics-this much-demanded resource sheds light on the essential components of the public health model, as well as the increasing complexity of the mental health field in an era of managed behavioral healthcare.
Ten policy papers on issues confronting the behavioral healthcare field with suggestions for future directions have been accepted for publication in a late 1998 special issue of the journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. The papers address consumer, family, and provider issues; service integration for children and adults; the relationship between State Medicaid and State Mental Health Agencies; purchasing of mental health services by the public sector; and issues surrounding clinical practice guidelines, outcomes, and report cards.
Ronald Manderscheid, Ph.D., Branch Chief, gave a number of keynote speeches, participated in and chaired panel discussions, and convened various workshops. Among his activities are a keynote address at the Annual Meeting of the CMHS Systems in Kansas City, Kansas, in May; presenting a paper to the American Public Welfare Association's Annual Meeting on "Essential Quality Tools for Children," in Washington, D.C., in July; another keynote address at the Annual Rural Mental Health Conference, in Lexington, Kentucky, in June; chairmanship of the CMHS "Activities on Quality Tools Panel" at The National Alliance on Mental Illness Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., also in July; a workshop on the "Automation of the Human Services Record," in San Diego, California in August; and remarks at the "Mental Health Component of the National Disability Survey, National Center for Health Statistics Disability Rollout, Annual Meeting on Disability Statistics in Washington, D.C.
In addition, Marilyn Henderson, M.Sc., Supervisory Survey Statistician, in June convened a focus group on clinical practice guidelines in Washington, D.C.
Memoranda of Understanding Between Agencies
CMHS, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) have entered into a "Cooperative Agreement to Study Women with Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health (ADM) Disorders Who Have Histories of Violence." This initiative is designed to study the complex interaction of violence, substance abuse, and mental health disorders on women who are victims of violence and the children they rear. Phase One of this two-phase study will develop an integrated system of care with services intervention models, implement the qualitative phase one evaluation, and develop evaluation protocols for Phase Two.
This cooperative agreement is based, in large part, on a number of meetings CMHS sponsored over the last six months. Among those meetings were "Mothers with Psychiatric Disabilities," "Awakening from Silence: Self-inflicted Injury in the Lives of Women and Girls," and "Responding to the Behavioral Health Care Issues of Persons with Histories of Physical and Sexual Abuse: A National Experts Meeting."
Christine L. Guthrie, M.Ph., Special Assistant to the Deputy Director, assists in analyzing health and related data, interpreting policy and providing guidance on a range of personnel activities, preparing reports of findings, and conducting special studies.
As an officer in the Public Health Service commissioned Corps, she has analyzed the mental health and substance abuse provisions of State Child Health Insurance Program plans to determine breadth of coverage, flexibility, family orientation, and to propose outreach strategies.
During graduate school at the University of North Carolina, Ms. Guthrie was part of a team to develop and implement suggestions for evaluating the quality of health components of the "Smart Start" program, a county-based intervention to prepare young children for success in school. Ms. Guthrie also has worked as a school counselor, a medical social worker, and a coordinator and trainer for a suicide prevention education program. She is fluent in Spanish.
Office of Managed Care
Tiffany Ho, M.D., joins CMHS as a senior medical policy advisor with expertise on insurance benefit design, as well as medical and psychiatric issues related to managed care. Dr. Ho received her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and complete her residency in psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. She has served as a Health Policy Fellow on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee, working on the staff of Representative Pete Stark (D-CA).
Dr. Ho has provided outpatient psychiatric treatment and consultation, supervised residential, inpatient, and emergency facilities, and participated in a fact-finding mission organized by the American Psychiatric Association to study mental health system of South Africa. In addition, she has been an active member of the American Psychiatric Association's Joint Commission of Government Relations and the council on International Affairs. Dr. Ho also has participated in medical missions in Vietnam, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.
Child, Adolescent, and Family Branch
In April and May 1998, three new staff members joined this Branch:
Elizabeth Sweet (Liz), M. Ed. Ms. Sweet's primary responsibility is to serve as Program Director for the Statewide Family Network Grants. Formerly she was the Executive Director of the North Dakota Federation of Families For Children's Mental Health. Ms. Sweet's expertise comes from her experience as the mother of three children with special needs, and one son who came to live with Ms. Sweet and her husband at the age of eight from institutional care. Ms. Sweet's background includes a B.A. in social work and an M.A. in guidance and counseling. She is licensed as an addiction counselor in North Dakota and is also a licensed professional counselor. She worked for three years as a case manager for adults with developmental disabilities. Ms. Sweet then worked for seven years with adolescents and their families as an addiction counselor in a private inpatient facility. She then held responsibilities for the women's addiction program in that same facility. Ms. Sweet's commitment to her family and this work make her an asset to the team in the Child, Adolescent and Family Branch. She also gives voice to the concern of parents at the Federal level within the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services Program for Children and Their Families.
Louise M. Peloquin, Ph.D., serves as the program director for the communications campaign. This national campaign, which was transferred from the Office of External Liaison in November 1997, assists the 31 grantee sites in the full range of community outreach programs including social marketing, spokesperson training, product development, and media relations. Dr. Peloquin brings a unique combination of education and experience to this position.
Her doctorate is in education/psychology. She also holds masters degrees in education/counseling and clinical-administration social work. Over the past 20 years, she has served as a researcher, trainer, and public health advisor to government agencies and nonprofit organizations such as Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, Lamaze Childbirth Association, and the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation.
For the past seven years Dr. Peloquin served as a senior project director with an international consulting firm and was responsible for collaborating with researchers, physicians, nurses, mental health providers, and allied health professionals in developing appropriate training and technical assistance in prevention, early identification and treatment of substance abuse. Her duties included developing, conducting, and coordinating educational activities, such as social marketing and dissemination approaches, under a contract sponsored by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. The focus of this work was to integrate prevention and treatment initiatives in mental health and disease prevention for special populations. Dr. Peloquin's background combines working with children, families, and community-based programs as a licensed clinical social worker, as well as developing social marketing and health communication programs.
Ms. Roslyn Holliday Moore serves as the program director for the urban grantee sites and the National Resource Network at the Washington Business Group on Health. Ms. Moore received her B.S., in speech-language pathology, and an M.S., in speech-language pathology from Columbia University. Ms. Moore's 22 years of experience combines providing direct services as a speech-language pathologist in a State operated children's psychiatric facility with administrative responsibilities as an inpatient program coordinator. Before joining the Child, Adolescent, and Family Branch she served for three years as the director of FRIENDS (Families Reaching in Ever New Directions) initiative.
In this position she directed all activities related to the implementation of a community-based system of care program funded through CMHS. This included developing and implementing transition management plans in inpatient and outpatient mental health settings, coordinating community division programs with main campus operations of a children's psychiatric center, maintaining Division budgets and monitoring program expenditures, and eliciting support from borough providers and the NYC Department of Mental Health to increase consumer participation in policy development and political decisions. This combination of education and experience has provided Ms. Moore with an in-depth overview of the principles and program requirements for grantee sites in the Child, Adolescent, and Family Branch.
Homeless Programs Branch
Bruce DeForge, Ph.D., will join the Branch on Sept. 14, 1998, and will serve as the associate director of evaluation. Dr. DeForge comes to CMHS from the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where he served as the director of research. He also was adjunct faculty in the School of Social Work at the university. Prior to his employment there, he served as the lead data analyst/manager of a research demonstration funded by NIMH. This project investigated the effectiveness of linking housing and treatments for homeless individuals with serious mental illnesses. Dr. DeForge will help create in-house data bases from CMHS knowledge development initiatives that allow the Center to continue to explore knowledge application opportunities. In addition, he will assume project officer responsibilities related to his areas of expertise.
Protection and Advocacy Branch
Carlotta F. Donehue is a Presidential Management Intern within the Department of Human Health Services and serves as a Project Officer/Public Health Advisor for the CMHS Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Office.
Ms. Donehue holds an M.A. in Rehabilitation from South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. She completed a six-month internship in the in the psychology department of the Federal Correctional Institution in Estill, SC, where she focused on the linkage between substance abuse/ mental health and abuse/neglect within the corrections system. As an undergraduate, she worked in a juvenile correctional residential facility advocating for the rights of children. During her tenure as the director of the facility, Ms. Donehue gained expertise in community based programming, behavioral management models, and legal advocacy. In addition, Ms. Donehue has served as a public school teacher working with children who have special needs, both physical disabilities and serious emotional disturbances.
Ms. Donehue has extensive experience in mental health, public health, human service, and legal advocacy issues. As a PAIMI Project Officer, Ms. Donehue draws on her experience and skills to perform policy and planning development activities and provide national direction as well as technical assistance to the designated P&A systems in the 50 states, six territories, and the District of Columbia.
Special Programs Development Branch
In September, Nancy Davis, Ph.D., joins this CMHS Branch. Dr. Davis is a licensed psychologist and received her doctorate from Harvard University in counseling and consulting psychology. While in the Boston area, she was the director of post doctoral training at the Danielsen Institute at Boston University and the director of psychiatric and substance abuse programs at the Charles River Hospital. Most recently, Dr. Davis has been working in private practice and on the integration of psychological and medical services in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Other areas of specialization include addictive behaviors, domestic violence, wellness, and cardiac rehabilitation.
Titles of her published articles include, Treating the Substance Abusing Trauma Survivor; Medical and Emotional Issues of Perimenopause and Menopause; The Psychologist's Role in the Campaign Against Domestic Violence; and Transitions in the Lives of Women. She has written two text books on human development and the psychology of the human life cycle. Dr. Davis will assume the lead in the Branch on women's issues and will assist in CMHS initiatives on resilience.
State Planning and Systems Development Branch
Albert Byrd, M.S.W., has over 30 years experience at the State and Federal levels. As a career employee within the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Byrd currently works with the Assistant Secretary on Aging. He participated in the Mini White House Conference on Mental Health and Aging where he was instrumental in developing recommendations for knowledge development and application.
Mr. Byrd has worked on quality control issues, service guidelines and practice assessment initiatives, formula block and discretionary grant programs, health program analysis, and policy and program activities in a number of DHHS agencies. In addition, Mr. Byrd has extensive experience working collaboratively with business and voluntary sectors, as well as with congressional committees on matters related to public health, housing, employment, transportation, welfare, and services integration.
His direct involvement in the implementation of White House Executive Orders and Directives to the Secretary of Health and Human Services positions him well in the formulation and implementation of policy and practices related to working with States in building comprehensive
coordinated community-based systems of services for people at risk. He also has played a pivotal role in developing National, State, and community level initiatives to prevent substance and prescription drug misuse and mental illness.
Addendum
In addition to the projects previously described, the Division of Knowledge Development and Systems Change as well as the Division of State and Community Systems Development report the following activities:
Division of Knowledge Development and Systems Change
KEN01-0116
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