The annual meeting of the Western Academic Leadership Forum (WALF) will be held April 21-23 in Rapid City, SD. Themed “Academic Leadership: Charting the Future in a Sea of National and International Imperatives,” the meeting will feature sessions on postsecondary readiness, the Bologna accreditation process, and other topics. Invited to the forum are chief academic officers of bachelor, master, and doctoral institutions in the WICHE states, along with chief executives and chief academic officers for systems and state governing boards. WALF’s new Web-based toolkit, a repository of best practices and decision making tools for academic leaders, will launch at this meeting.

This June WICHE is hosting the annual meeting of the National Association for Rural Mental Health (NARMH). The goals of the meeting, to be held in Denver on June 2-5 and themed “Innovations in Caring for Rural America,”  are to initiate a dialogue about rural behavioral health; highlight resources in rural and frontier communities; and foster an environment that encourages people to make connections. The conference will bring together healthcare providers, researchers, advocates, and policymakers, as well as persons in recovery and family members. Scholarships are available for rural mental healthcare providers; the deadline for application is April 15. A pre-conference training program focuses on mental health first aid; for more information, contact Jenny Shaw.

Photo of Dennis Mohatt, Roslyn Carter, Jeanne Ritter

WICHE’s Dennis Mohatt, Mental Health Program director and vice president of behavioral health, was in attendance at the 25th Anniversary Mental Health Symposium, hosted by former first lady Rosalynn Carter at the Carter Center in Atlanta in November. Jeannie Ritter, Colorado’s first lady, also attended; and Larry Green, a primary care physician from the University of Colorado, presented. Green’s panel, one of three, focused on the idea of a “health home,” designed to help overcome the fragmentation that exists between behavioral healthcare and primary care and to aid patients and families in finding the right kind of care. The symposium’s other two major themes were comparative effectiveness research and health IT. The Carter Center has archived the symposium’s presentations.

 

February 2010  | Share this on Twitter | Post this on Facebook