Integrated Care Conference

30 Years of Integration: Innovating in the Pursuit of Healing

This year our plenaries will take you on a curated journey, from the tactics needed to reinforce the integrated care workforce to the wellness needed to sustain it. These community events will leave you refreshed, energized, and proud to be an integrated healthcare worker.

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Supporting The Workforce By Building Regional Communities

Thursday, October 13th, 2022

It feels monumental, doesn’t it? To build a workforce that is trained to work in teams, integrating the physical and behavioral seamlessly? While it is a big task regional networks of all kinds are getting it done. This plenary will be both inspirational and tactical in highlighting what regional networks are currently doing and pointing us to what still needs to happen to support the development of the modern care team. 

Objectives

  • To disseminate best practices for forming regional networks that support the workforces across organizations
  • To encourage their development by demonstrating their efficacy
  • To connect individuals by region
  • To connect the work of regional networks with efforts to diversify the workforce.

Facilitators

Eboni Winford, Ph.D., MPH is the Director of Research and Health Equity and a licensed psychologist/Behavioral Health Consultant at Cherokee Health Systems in Knoxville, TN. Dr. Winford provides clinical care to patients in primary care settings while supporting the development and implementation of initiatives designed to achieve health equity for CHS patients through translational research, clinical practices, and education.

Monica Williams Harrison is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker that provides consultation for agencies around Integrated Care and practices Integrated Care at Hartford Healthcare. Monica is also the National Association of Social Workers Board Director Representative for Region II (Connecticut and New York City).

Building the BioPsychoSocial Workforce for Equity, Diversity, and Better Patient Care

Friday, October 14th, 2022

So we have a healthcare marketplace that is increasingly seeing the wisdom of integrated care delivery, but is academic training keeping pace with the demand for workers? What do we need to reconfigure academic training so that we produce medical and behavioral health professionals ready for integrated care work? And how do we incorporate training for community health workers, peer support specialists, and others who are part of the “social” of biopsychosocial? This plenary will be a call to action to transform the academic workforce pipeline and highlight exemplars of changes that are already in place.

Objectives

  • To identify best practices for engaging academic partners in training for primary care behavioral health
  • To underscore the urgency of reducing the strain on the current workforce by opening up the pipeline to trainees
  • To identify the core challenges that remain with fully engaging academic training to develop a robust workforce for primary care behavioral health

Panelists

Jason Herndon, PhD, MSPH, is a licensed psychologist with experience in supervision and training, administration, and clinical practice. He is the Director for the Psychology Clinic for UNC Greensboro and the founder of Integrated Psyche, a counseling and consulting practice. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Collaborative Family Health Association and the North Carolina Psychological Association, where he is also chair of the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) committee. Originally from Texas, he now resides with his family in North Carolina.

Alexander (Sandy) Blount, EdD, has been part of CFHA from its beginning, and coined the term “integrated primary care.” He is Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the UMass Chan Medical School. His books include Integrated Primary Care: The Future of Medical and Mental Health Collaboration (1998, Norton) and Patient-Centered Primary Care (2019, Springer). He is past Editor of Families, Systems and Health, a past President of CFHA, and a proud Bloch Award winner. Currently, he provides training and consultation in behavioral health integration, and leads the Certificate Program in Primary Care Behavioral Health Leadership through CFHA.

The Integrated Care Podcast, Live! Policy and the Integrated Workforce Challenge

Saturday, October 15th, 2022

If you love our podcast, you will love this unique session. Our podcast team, along with special guests, will do a live recording of the podcast centered on ways to think about policy and its relationship to the needs of the integrated healthcare workforce. Special guest and policy guru, Marci Nielsen, will headline our experts talking about what we need to do and think about with respect to making policy that supports the modern care team.

Objectives

  • To identify the core skills clinicians need to engage policy at various levels
  • To identify and discuss the needs of the field at large and how to achieve results that matter
  • To clarify elements which are amenable to policy change and those which are not

Bridget Beachy

Deepu George

Monica Harrison

Marci Nielsen

Grace Pratt

Neftali Serrano

Community Conversation: How Do We Make Healthcare Work Sustainable?

Saturday, October 15th, 2022

We will end the conference with a special community event focused on helping us leave the conference with an eye towards wellness and sustainability. After a great CFHA conference, we often leave energized and ready to rumble, but we also know that the strain of the work is real. So, we have two experts who are going to lead us in a “sending” experience to help us harness that positive energy and translate it into meaningful and lasting efforts to maintain wellness. You won’t want to miss this powerful community experience.

Objectives

  • To disseminate best practices for forming regional networks that support the workforces across organizations
  • To encourage their development by demonstrating their efficacy
  • To connect individuals by region
  • To connect the work of regional networks with efforts to diversify the workforce

Facilitators

Joan Fleishman is a clinical psychologist, Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine, and the Co-Founder of Tend Health. She has spent the majority of her career working in medical settings and forwarding the field of behavioral health integration in primary care. In 2020 she co-founded Tend Health, an organization that provides specialized, expert, low-friction mental health care to healthcare professionals. She holds the role of CEO and clinician, providing educational offerings and clinical services to the healthcare professionals Tend serves.

Christine Runyan is a clinical health psychologist, Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the Co-Founder of Tend Health. After starting her career as a psychologist in the US Air Force, she focused her research, clinical service, and teaching on behavioral science in family medicine as well as promoting models of integrated primary care. Dr. Runyan is also a mindfulness teacher at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. Tend Health provides specialized, private, and accessible mental health care and education to healthcare professionals and consultation to healthcare organizations willing to invest in their most precious resource.