Thank you to Senator Brown, Senator Udall, and our panelists for a great event.  Video segments of each panelist’s full remarks are now available below.  Please continue to check back as we will continue to add resources from the forum.

Bridging the Gap through Innovation:
Expanding Access to Adolescent Mental Health Services

Congressional Participants:

The Honorable Scott Brown, U.S. Senator (Massachusetts)
The Honorable Tom Udall, U.S. Senator (New Mexico)

“I’m proud to support the cause of improving mental health services for our children and teens. From my own childhood, I recognize how critical it is to help our youth weather the tough circumstances that can come early in life.” – Senator Scott Brown (MA)	“We have a moral obligation to help young people from every background and ethnicity with the support they need to overcome and deal with depression and suicidal tendencies.” – Senator Tom Udall (NM)

 
Highlights from the Eric Trendell Health Policy Forum 2011

 

Panel:

Up to half of all visits to pediatricians now involve behavioral, emotional or developmental concerns. Yet, many primary care providers express discomfort with their training and ability to treat pediatric mental disorders, and the shortage of child and adolescent mental health specialists often makes referral difficult. This forum highlights innovative programs that are successfully bridging this gap and expanding access to care.

 
Laurie Flynn - Executive Director, TeenScreen National Center at Columbia University introduces the panel and speakers.


 

Greg V. Jensen, LCSW, ACSW is the Vice President for Behavioral Health Services at Lone Star Circle of Care, a behaviorally enhanced Federally Qualified Health Center in Round Rock, Texas that provides care to uninsured, underinsured and medically underserved patients.  Mr. Jensen discusses the importance of integrating behavioral health into general health care and describes how this challenge is being met through collocated, integrated care in their 25 health centers in central Texas.


 

Steven Adelsheim, MD is the Director of the Center for Rural and Community Behavioral Health and Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, & Family/Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico, Department of Psychiatry.  Dr. Adelsheim discusses the unique challenges of ensuring access to adolescent mental health services in a largely rural, poor state with a diverse population. Learn how New Mexico is employing tele-video and other unique approaches to provide care to those who might otherwise have very limited or no access to specialty mental health care.


 

David Keller, MD is a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics and a Senior Analyst at the Center for Health Policy and Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  As a pediatrician, Dr. Keller provides a first hand perspective on the need for better communication between child psychiatrists and primary care clinicians and describes how the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project evolved to help fill this gap. He explains how this program is successfully improving primary care clinicians’ ability to meet the mental health needs of their patients and discusses the burgeoning effort to build similar programs in other states.


 

A. Seiji Hayashi, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer at the Bureau of Primary Health Care in the Health Resources and Services Administration, describes his agency’s commitment to the integration of behavioral health services into primary care.  He discusses how we can implement innovations like collocated care, telepsychiatry and clinical consultation at a system level, as well as how patient-centered medical homes and the adoption of health information technology can play a role in improving care.


 

Barbara Edwards is the Director of the Disabled and Elderly Health Programs Group at the Center for Medicaid, CHIP and Survey and Certification in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  She discusses the role of the Medicaid program in providing health coverage for more than 30 million youth in the United States and provides an overview of how CMS is working to improve access and care, especially with regard to behavioral health services.