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April 2009
A Note from John Morris
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Welcome to the inaugural issue of News from The Annapolis Coalition. It is hard to believe that almost two years have elapsed since the release of An Action Plan on Behavioral Health Workforce Development. Funded by the three Centers within the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, along with the Office of the Administrator, the publication of the Action Plan was the culmination of a two year strategic planning process that involved over 5,000 individuals across the nation; many of you reading this newsletter are among them. The publication marked a transition point in the work of the Coalition as we shifted our focus from plan development to plan dissemination and now to plan implementation in the form of technical assistance. We are consulting primarily to states, regional and local governments and academia as each works to fundamentally change their approach to behavioral health workforce development. The Coalition has been invited to make presentations to a large number of national meetings, state and local conferences, and we have provided consultation to a wide range of stakeholders in the governmental and not-for-profit sectors.
Since we released the report, we have been quite busy, but we always knew that we wanted to continue to stay in touch with those individuals who have become part of the workforce reform movement, and to greatly expand our network to include others who are passionate about this work. Hence, this newsletter, which we will publish regularly—and which you should freely e-mail or otherwise circulate to people who share our passion for improving the quality of the behavioral health workforce.
If you are unfamiliar with The Coalition, please visit our
website to learn more.
In our next issue, we will report on a number of exciting partnerships we have entered into to help sustain and expand our work. In future issues, we will be reporting on efforts that are underway in several states to enhance workforce development efforts, and other innovative approaches that people are taking to move this reform agenda forward.
We know how valuable your time is, so we will keep each issue brief, but provide links to more detailed information so that you can drill down on issues of special interest to you. In the current newsletter, we invite you to read testimony submitted by The Coalition to the Senate Finance Committee on the important role of the behavioral health workforce in any efforts toward healthcare reform.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE TESTIMONY. It is our intention to be vigilant about keeping the behavioral health workforce issues front-and-center, and encourage our readers to let us know of opportunities to do so.
We hope you will find this e-newsletter useful. Please contact us with questions or suggestions. (Directions for unsubscribing are found at the end of this page—although we hope you won’t!) This is exciting work, and we want to stay connected.
John A. Morris, MSW
Executive Director
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