New USDA Study Reports Factors Affecting Recruitment, Retention of Rural Clinicians

A recent report published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture identifies community-level factors affecting the recruitment and retention of rural healthcare professionals. The authors used key informant interviews and a survey of healthcare professionals in 150 small, rural towns in nine states, emphasizing a broad range of community assets and investments. Most participants perceived social

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Annapolis Coalition Presents Innovation Award to Pennsylvania Psychiatric Leadership Council

The Annapolis Coalition on the Behavioral Health Workforce presented an Innovation Award to the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Leadership Council (PPLC) and its parent company, the Philadelphia Mental Health Care Corporation (PMHCC) in January 2023. The PPLC was recognized for its innovative efforts to support community mental health in Pennsylvania by creating an infrastructure to increase the

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Annapolis Coalition Reflects on BH challenges, Trends Over 20 years

The Annapolis Coalition’s worked has spanned more than 20 years, since first coming together in 2001. Mental Health Weekly recently spoke with Michael Hoge, Ph.D., Senior Science and Policy Advisor for the Coalition, about some of the challenges and trends the behavioral health workforce is facing. Some milestones of the Coalition’s work over the years

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The Children’s Mental Health Tsunami: Can the Workforce Stay Afloat?

by Larke Nahme Huang, Ph.D. Annapolis Coalition Board Member Former, Senior Policy Advisor, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration The mental health crisis for children and adolescents in the U.S. has reached a critical point, presenting challenges not only to families, communities and the mental health care system, but across all child-serving systems, including

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Workforce Strategies for the Crisis in ED Utilization

The Senior Science and Policy Advisor for the Annapolis Coalition, Dr. Michael Hoge, has been focused on the national crisis in child and adolescent mental health. In collaboration with Connecticut colleagues at the Child Health and Development Institute and the Yale School of Medicine, he has authored a new article, Emergency Department Use by Children

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Thoughts for a New Year in behavioral healthcare

by Leighton Huey, MD Secretary/Treasurer and Member, Board of Directors, Annapolis Coalition on the Behavioral Health Workforce Associate Dean, Professor of Psychiatry, Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine Over the past many years, the Annapolis Coalition has done important work addressing the frontline behavioral health workforce, primarily focusing on this important group of workers as “neglected”

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Overdose deaths grow…and grow

by Michael T. Flaherty, Ph.D., Chair, Annapolis Coalition on the Behavioral Health Workforce [email protected]   Despite increased funding for services, increased access to medication assisted treatment, and ever-growing community efforts into harm reduction practices, drug overdoses in the U.S. were estimated to be 100,306 in the 12-month period ending April 2021, a record high (1).

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National Council, HMA prepare recommendations for workforce crisis

The National Council for Mental Wellbeing, in collaboration with Health Management Associates (HMA), has prepared a series of three issue briefs to offer immediate actions states and others can take to expand current capacity and build a more stable future mental health and substance use treatment workforce. The first brief (released in January 2022) Behavioral Health

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Workforce Evolution, Transformation or Revolution

What Will it Take?  Recently a colleague sent me a link to a presentation I gave at the 31st Annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium that was focused on the behavioral health workforce.  In this talk entitled, The Behavioral Health Workforce: Evolution, Transformation or Revolution, I did not recount the multifaceted nature of the problem, nor its

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