Jones, Rachel, MEd, LPC

Rachel Jones is the Director of Trauma Services at Missouri Department of Mental Health. In her current role, she serves as the DMH leader responsible for the development, implementation and management of DMH’s statewide trauma and wellness vision, strategy and programs. She provides trauma informed training, consultation and technical assistance with various projects to further implement trauma-informed knowledge, practices and treatment. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor and received Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology, Minor Degree in Black Studies, and a Master’s Degree in Educational, School and Counseling Psychology from University of Missouri-Columbia.

She has a combined 16 year’s experience providing individual and family therapy, working in community-based mental health, developing school partnerships, crisis response and management, public speaking and training, inpatient alcohol/drug rehabilitation and in-home therapy settings. For several years, she has provided secondary traumatic stress trainings to various helping professional agencies ranging from mental health, early childhood providers and child welfare staff to school, prison, juvenile justice, law enforcement and faith-based entities.

Presentation(s): 

DMH CARES About Employee Wellness

 

 

Strait, Rick, MS, LPC, CRDAC, CCDPP, CGDC

Rick is a suicide attempt survivor; his primary job is with Community Counseling Center as the Integrated Treatment for Co-occurring Disorders (ITCD) program manager and suicide prevention coordinator. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and certified addictions counselor.   He is a member of the American Association of Suicidology and serves on two committees. Rick is the team leader for Zero Suicide at his agency and faculty for National Zero Suicide Academy. He works as an adjunct professor for Central Methodist University, training future mental health professionals. He is involved in CIT in his region as a member of the council and provides training in suicide prevention. He is a member of the Missouri Suicide Prevention Network. Rick serves as a board member of United Suicide Survivors International and with the Eastern Missouri Chapter of AFSP. He works in any venue and opportunity to provide education and training in the area of suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. He is responsible for organizing the largest suicide prevention conference in Missouri and keeping the conference free to the community. He is the co-founder of blog www.listeningsaveslives.net and is involved with www.nowmattersnow.org. Rick is a co-author of The i’Mpossible Project Reengaging with Life, Creating a New You, where he shares how his history of depression and suicide attempt has motivated him to educate others so that everyone is able to help someone who may be struggling. Rick works to combine his lived experience with his professional training to help provide support to anyone impacted by suicide while trying to help provide education to help reduce and prevent suicide.

Presentation(s):

Diversity: The Thread that Holds Us All Together

Speaker(s):

Tiffany Lacy Clark, MA

Rachel Jones, LPC

Presentation: The session will bridge the worlds of trauma informed care and cultural competency. We’ll explore the cultural competency toolkit and the five principles of trauma informed care. The goal is to collapse some of the work duplication of the state’s cultural competency committee and the state’s trauma informed care committee to streamline service initiatives that make the experience better for the staff and persons served.

Objectives:

  1. Discuss the cultural competency plans of the Missouri Coalition for Community Behavioral Healthcare
  2. Review the cultural competency toolkit developed for Missouri’s behavioral health organizations
  3. Discuss with participants how to utilize the cultural competency toolkit to help their agency

Diverse Families: Cultural Competency in Working with LGBT Parents

Speaker(s):

Ryan Barker, MSW, MPPA

Presentation: In the 2000 U. S. Census, 33 percent of female same-sex couple households and 22 percent of male same-sex couple households reported at least one child under the age of 18 living in the home. These numbers have only continued to grow as more and more members of the LGBT community are building families, both as single adults or as couples. This session will explore providing culturally competent care to these families and address issues such as language, paperwork, access to care, discrimination, and existing disparities. Health providers should be familiar with the strengths and challenges experienced by these families and how state and federal policies can affect the health of LGBT families. In this session, Ryan Barker, will share his own story of raising a foster/adoptive child with his husband and how his own experiences translate to providing culturally competent care to the diversity of LGBT families throughout Missouri.

Objectives:

  1. Describe the diversity of LGBT families and the unique challenges experienced by these families within the health system, especially the mental health system
  2. Discuss how state and federal policies impact the health and security of LGBT families
  3. Provide tangible actions that can be taken to provide culturally competent care to LGBT families

Barker, Ryan, MSW, MPPA

Ryan Barker, MSW, MPPA is the Vice President of Health Policy at Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH). He joined the Foundation in 2002 and assisted in the establishment and growth of the Health Policy area at MFH. His work has included research and education on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as Missouri’s Medicaid program. Since the passage of the ACA, he has conducted more than 300 sessions on the impact of the ACA to a variety of groups (e.g., health care providers, chambers of commerce, health systems, social service organizations). His work also focuses on increasing health equity for all Missourians, including strategies to eliminate health disparities and create structural change through local and state policies. He currently oversees the Foundation’s Cover Missouri Coalition, which has 1,000 members and is working to reduce the uninsured rate in Missouri to less than 5 percent in the next 5 years.        

Prior to joining MFH, Ryan worked at The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati focusing on program evaluation and grantmaking in the area of severe mental illness. Before entering the foundation world, Ryan was a clinical social worker with runaway and homeless youth at social service agencies in Cincinnati, Ohio and Portland, Oregon.

Ryan obtained a Bachelor in Science from Xavier University, a Master in Social Work from the University of Cincinnati, and a Master in Public Policy Administration from the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL). In 2014, Ryan received a Distinguished Alumni Award from UMSL in recognition of his career, service to the community, and to the PPA program.

Presentation(s): 

Diverse Families: Cultural Competency in Working with LGBT Parents

Manejwala, Omar, MD

Omar Manejwala, MD, is senior vice president and chief medical officer and responsible for overseeing Catasys clinical affairs, where he leads new product development efforts. Dr. Manejwala is a psychiatrist, a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He has extensive addiction experience and a passion for integrated treatment approaches. Previously, Dr. Manejwala served as medical director at Hazelden. Prior to Hazelden he was the associate medical director at the Farley Center and the executive chief resident in Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center. He graduated from the University of Maryland, School of Medicine and earned his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School. He is the author of Craving: Why We Can’t Seem to Get Enough (Hazelden Publishing). Learn more at manejwala.com.

Dr. Omar Manejwala is passionate about bringing the science of addiction to light. Better understanding of addiction and self-destructive behavior can help everyone involved in this devastating disease—from addicts and family members to doctors and treatment centers. Whether he is involved in treating one addict or speaking to millions via national media outlets, Dr. Omar is quick to connect the dots between brain science and behavior. He believes that by properly treating, and even preventing addiction, we can save lives—not just the lives of addicts, but in many ways also the lives of their families, friends, and loved ones.

As one of the nation’s leading experts on addiction medicine, substance abuse and mental illness, Dr. Omar offers insight and analysis on news developments related to addiction and mental health. He has appeared on national and international television networks, and has been featured via radio and print media. He speaks to audiences about how they can leverage insights from brain and behavior science to change our habits and our lives. Through his work as an addiction speaker, he is able to chip away at the stigma behind addiction and mental health, which often stops people from pursuing wellness. In his latest book, William Cope Moyers says, “Dr. Manejwala knows addiction medicine inside and out.” And Drew Pinsky, M.D. (Dr. Drew) says, “Whether it’s a minor sugar craving or a serious threat to relapsing with drugs and alcohol, Dr. Manejwala explores the root causes of cravings and ways to combat them.”

Dr. Omar didn’t set out to become a substance abuse counselor or expert on addiction, but after losing one of his best friends to addiction in 2004, he chose to dedicate his personal and professional life to making a difference in the lives of people touched by addiction. His personal connection gives him a unique compassionate edge as he works with addicts. In his practice, he found he could often help patients who had already been written off by other doctors. In many ways, he learned as much about how to treat addiction from his patients and their loved ones as he did from the science.

Dr. Omar has spent his career studying and innovating in the fields of psychiatry and addiction. He graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and was the Executive Chief Resident in Psychiatry at Duke. He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a diplomat of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. He served as the Medical Director for Hazelden Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest and largest addiction centers. While there, he developed and launched a treatment program for healthcare professionals, treating over 350 clients in just 18 months. He was also able to drive large improvements in benchmarked patient satisfaction metrics.

Presentation(s): 

Keynote Address – Addiction: A Futurist’s Perspective

Richardson, Jill

Jill Richardson has worked for the Department of Mental Health for over 12 years. She currently serves as Missouri’s Statewide Family Network Coordinator.  She provides training and coordination for Family Support Providers and their supervisors in all regions of the state. When not at work she can be found riding horses and participating in many outdoor activities.

Presentation(s): 

SOC-Community for Early Signs & Symptoms: Engaging the Community is Early Intervention of Psychosis

Wheatley, Briana

Briana Wheatley is the Statewide Director of Disease Management within Preferred Family Healthcare in St. Louis, Missouri. She is also the provider supervisor for the TACC initiative. She provides direct support to the two community engagement specialists who enroll and monitor consumers in Epharmix for some of the following needs: depression, COPD, diabetes, substance use, basic needs and other chronic health concerns. Along with her coordination on this grant, she also works with the Disease Management initiative, where she supports teams providing in home interventions to chronically ill Missouri Medicaid consumers.

Presentation(s): 

Technology Assisted Care Coordination Texting & Telecoaching for Recovery

Srygley, Emily

Emily Srygley is the Director of Account Success at Epharmix in Saint Louis, Missouri and has helped manage the technology portion of the TACC initiative for the past two years. Epharmix is a SaaS remote patient monitoring platform, helping providers monitor rising risk patients. Epharmix sends SMS text messages and IVR phone calls on behalf of providers, collecting real-time patient data for disease states like depression, substance use, and other chronic conditions. Emily has helped coordinate the reporting and utilization of Epharmix for this grant and manages many different partnerships between Epharmix and Behavioral Health organizations throughout the state of Missouri and across the United States.

Presentation(s): 

Technology Assisted Care Coordination Texting & Telecoaching for Recovery