Mental Health Consensus Conference 2004

NACCHO and the National Mental Health Association (NMHA) held a joint conference focused on gaining consensus about mental health issues in the maternal and child health population.

The meeting brought together representatives of the mental health and public health communities to candidly discuss mental health practice and policy issues facing the maternal and child health community. The goals of the meeting were to:

• Identify barriers to mental health and public health collaboration in maternal and child health programming and policymaking.
• Identify the concerns of the mental health and public health communities regarding partnerships.
• Develop plans to ease communication between mental health and public health entities and to address current challenges to collaboration.
• Identify steps for policy and programming collaboration between mental health and public health at the local level.

The proceedings from the conference are being used to develop an issue brief on the connection between mental health and public health, which will include a series of guiding principles for collaboration between mental health and public health. The proceedings guide NACCHO's mental health activities and are available to the Maternal and Child Health Bureau  and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for use in guiding their mental health activities. In addition, NMHA will be able to use the findings to improve links to the public health community. The documents will also be promoted through Public Health Dispatch, conferences, and NACCHO's Web site and will be shared with relevant partners.

Results from Mental Health Consensus Conference 2004