The Maryland Mental Health Initiative Advocacy Conference

On June 7, 2008, the Center co-sponsored, along with the Maryland Regional Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Metropolitan Baltimore, a working conference devoted to exploring ways in which child psychiatrists, pediatricians, and families could best work together to improve accessibility to quality child mental health care in Maryland.  The participants (over 90) included a diverse group of clinicians, parents, advocates, and agency representatives. Working groups developed a set of recommendations for future action that included 1) building opportunities for regional networking and professional education; 2) developing models for co-locating mental health and primary care services, and 3) exploring the feasibility of a state-wide consultation system to build pediatricians' ability to provide mental health care and referral.

Click here to view the conference report in a more easily downloadable format

Click here to view the conference report with higher quality photos

The Maryland Children's Mental Health Collaborative

To carry out the plans developed at the advocacy conference, the conference committee became a standing working group, the Maryland Children's Mental Health Collaborative.  View the collaborative's mission statment here and keep up with activities at the collaborative's "blog" at http://www.mmhi.blogspot.com/.