On July 24, the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE), in partnership with the Sierra Health Foundation's Center for Health Program Management—plus project partners NorCal Mental Health America and Converge CRT—hosted a celebration highlighting the progress that has been made over the last two years in implementing components of the Sacramento Mental Health Action Plan.
The Sacramento Mental Health Action Plan was developed following Sacramento's National Day of Dialogue. The plan is aimed at building capacity for culturally competent mental health services in Sacramento. Members of the Creating Community Solutions Network and four action teams, all community stakeholders in mental health supporting services for transition-age youth, shared their implementation activities and outcomes, offering recommendations for future action.
Guest speaker Dr. LaVonna Blair Lewis, a professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and a noted expert on the health status and healthcare needs of underrepresented groups, discussed organizational approaches to cultural competency. Her presentation was titled Differences That Make a Difference: A Dialogue of Cultural Humility.
In response to President Obama's call for a national conversation to increase understanding of and awareness about mental health, Sacramento held the first National Dialogue on Mental Health, (Creating Community Solutions) in July 2013. The event launched an effort to develop a mental health action plan for Sacramento County by collecting input from more than 300 community members, including youth.
SCOE was selected to implement the Sacramento Mental Health Action Plan with partners NorCal Mental Health America and Converge CRT. The action plan implementation process is funded through a partnership that includes Sierra Health Foundation, The California Endowment, and Blue Shield of California Foundation. These partners, along with The California Wellness Foundation, funded the planning and delivery of the National Dialogue on Mental Health—Creating Community Solutions Sacramento, and the development of the resulting action plan. The Center for Health Program Management manages the project.