Twenty-seventh Annual STEP Symposium – Cancelled

This event has been cancelled. Please join us for our next STEP Symposium.

This is Us: Improving Family Involvement in Whole Person Care

Please join us April 25, 2020 as the Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health presents the 27th Annual STEP Symposium. This year’s STEP symposium will address the critical role families play in the treatment and recovery of persons with mental illness and take a critical look at how patients, families, providers and systems can work together effectively.

 

Save the Date!

Date/Time: Saturday, April 25, 2020 from 8am – 12pm

Location: The William and Ida Friday Center, 100 Friday Center Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27599

This event is open to the public, we greatly encourage patients and families to attend.

Cost:

Registration: $25/person

CEU (optional) $25/person

Lunch (optional) $20/person

Contact Paige Nuebel for additional questions.

Registration coming soon. Credit and Check payments accepted. No refunds after April 3, 2020.

If paying by check:
Please make checks payable to “UNC-CH Psychiatry” (in the memo line write “STEP Symposium”)
Mail checks to:
Paige Nuebel
Attn: STEP
UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health
Department of Psychiatry, CB 7160
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7160

 

Agenda

8:00 am – 8:30 am: Registration

8:30 am – 8:40 am: Welcome (John Gilmore & Lorna Moser)

8:40 am – 9:30 am: Strategies that Families and Providers can use to Work Together Better (Bette Stewart)

9:30 am – 10:15 am: HIPPA and Family Consent (Mark Botts)

10:15 am – 10:30 am: Break

10:30 am – 11:15 am: Family to Family and Other Family Centered initiatives (Barbara Maier)

11:15 am – 12:00 pm: Panel: Dignity of Risk

12:00pm – 1:00 pm: Optional Luncheon (Vegetarian options available)

 

Guest Speakers

Bette Stewart

Bette Stewart is a Consultant/Trainer at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Medicine, Evidence-Based Practice Center since 2002. She trains mental health providers on the implementation of two evidence-based practices; Assertive Community Treatment and Family Psychoeducation.  She continues to advocate for evidence-based mental health practices to best serve consumers and families. She has been working as an advocate for families and their loved ones diagnosed with serious mental illness since 1984 when her husband began re-experiencing symptoms of his schizoaffective disorder, which led to multiple hospitalizations in the State hospital system as well as legal and financial issues. After first-hand experiences trying to manage life, raise children and feeling totally lost when it came to mental health treatment, care and education, Ms. Stewart sought peer support and education from the local National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Ms. Stewart was hired as the Family Outreach Coordinator for a Robert Woods Johnson grant to fund the first Maryland ACT Team at the University of Maryland in 1990, a role she developed single handedly.

 

Mark Botts

Mark Botts has been an associate professor of Public Law and Government at the UNC school of Government since 1992. Prior to that, he served judicial clerkships with the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Botts’ publications include A Legal Manual for Area Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse Boards in North Carolina. Mark holds a BA from Albion College and a JD from the University of Michigan School of Law.

 

Barbara P. Maier

Barbara P. Maier, M.A. MFT, M.B.A. serves as the NAMI Orange County President. She is a “NAMI Basics: Caring for You, Your Family and Your Child” teacher and teacher trainer; NAMI Smarts state trainer and teacher; “Family to Family” and “NAMI Provider Education” teacher; and “Ending the Silence” presenter. She was the Executive Director of NAMI Cook County North Suburban from 2007 to 2010. Prior to that she served on the NAMI CCNS and NAMI Illinois boards before becoming NAMI Illinois’s Youth and Family Program Coordinator. She authored a grant from the Illinois Attorney General and she and her husband trained over 100 parents of children with serious mental illness to teach other parents how to lead their child’s treatment team. Barbara knows knowledge and understanding saves lives and is committed to bringing NAMI Signature programs to families in Orange, Chatham and Person Counties.

 

John Gilmore

John H. Gilmore, MD is the Thad and Alice Eure Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair for Research and Scientific Affairs in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He also directs the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health.  Dr. Gilmore has an active research program focused on brain development and risk for schizophrenia.  He has over 175 peer-reviewed papers.  He pioneered the use of magnetic resonance imaging to study early childhood brain development, and his Early Brain Development Studies is following over 1,000 children longitudinally from birth, the largest study of its kind. Dr. Gilmore received his BA in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia and his MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He did his psychiatry residency at Cornell-New York Hospital and a Psychiatry Research Fellowship at UNC.  He joined the faculty at UNC in 1991.

 

Lorna Moser

Lorna L. Moser, PhD, is a Clinical Associate Professor within the UNC Department of Psychiatry and is the Director of the Institute for Best Practices within the Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health.  Dr. Moser is a mental health services researcher, with 15 peer-reviewed publications. She is the co-developer of the Tool for Measurement of ACT (TMACT), a nationally recognized contemporary measure of ACT fidelity. She has a range of clinical experiences, including working on two ACT teams.  In the past 17 years, she has had the pleasure of providing technical assistance related to ACT implementation in 12 U.S. states, in addition to the focused support offered to North Carolina.  Since 2008, Dr. Moser has been a coordinator of the North Carolina ACT Coalition, which is a grassroots learning collaborative and advocacy group comprised of ACT providers invested in providing higher fidelity ACT services.

 

Jacob Schonberg

Jacob Schonberg, CPSS is the peer support specialist with the UNC Wake ACT Team. He has over a decade of experience working in community mental health, having helped to build an ACT team in Durham and then joining the UNC team in January of 2019. Prior to working in ACT, Jacob spent two years working in facility-based crisis and substance use detox in Chapel Hill. In addition, Jacob is involved with the NC Harm Reduction Coalition’s syringe exchange and naloxone distribution programs. He has received training in multiple evidenced based therapy practices in order to better support his team members, the provision of multiple wellness curriculums, and core peer support training. He is a trained SOAR worker, completing the disability application process for individuals with severe mental health needs, as well as a trained facilitator of and presenter on psychiatric advanced directives. Jacob is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and substance use disorder, with a history of multiple hospitalizations. He is heavily involved in the local recovery community, and has been in recovery himself for the last 13 years. He is now in school at Durham Technical Community College with the eventual goal of a master’s degree in social work.

 

Emily Clark

Emily Clark, LCSW, LCAS, CCS is a Clinical Instructor and Team Lead for the UNC-Wake Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT). Emily earned her MSW from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2006 and has been working in ACTT and community-based behavioral health services since that time. She joined the UNC-Wake ACT Team at its inception in 2013 as the Co-Occurring Disorders Specialist and transitioned to Team Lead in 2015. Her interests include improving ACTT implementation and high-fidelity practices, as well as best practices for individuals with co-occurring substance use disorders and severe, persistent mental illness. She provides training around integrated treatment for dual disorders as well as clinical supervision for ACTT clinicians.

 

Melinda Asbury

Melinda Asbury, MD, PhD is an assistant professor with UNC Department of Psychiatry and Medical Director for the Wake ACT Team. She specializes in the treatment of individuals with serious mental illness and brings expertise in intensive community-based interventions, first episode psychosis and integrated care. She also works with psychiatry and family medicine residents who are training with the Wake ACT team. Asbury joined the Center in May 2019. Prior to her residency training at Duke University Medical School, she received her medical degree and a doctorate in biomedical sciences with an emphasis in neuropharmacology from the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University. She uses her expertise in neuropsychopharmacology in combination with evidence-based cognitive intervention as her primary treatment modalities. Asbury is also involved in several research studies at the Center’s North Carolina Psychiatric Research Center, and she continues to collaborate at Duke and Durham VA Medical Center with her research focused on optimizing the provision of palliative and hospice care for individuals with serious mental illness.