Don’t miss the Alliance’s Annual Albany Executive Seminar, entitled Urgent Actions, Bold Solutions: Leadership in Unprecedented Times, to be heldat the Albany Marriott on Wolf Road between April 24-25, 2025!
This year’s program brings together key New York State and New York City leaders to share the latest information and thinking about the impact of the most dramatic policy and programmatic changes in our history. These include:
Meeting the Challenge in New York State and New York City featuring Moira Tashjian, Executive Deputy Commissioner, NYS Office of Mental Health, Dr. H. Jean Wright II, Executive Deputy Commissioner, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Lara Kassel, Coalition Coordinator, Medicaid Matters NY, Ruth Lowenkron, Dir. Disability Justice Program, NY Lawyers for the Public Interest and Jihoon Kim, CEO, InUnity Alliance
Here’s more about Dr. Wright II:
City’s New Mental Health Chief On Why Trauma-Informed Care Can Improve Outcomes
Amanda D’ambrosio Crain’s Health Pulse May 30, 2024
“…as the city Health Department’s new top mental health official and years into New York’s persistent mental health crisis, Dr. H. Jean Wright II says effective behavioral health treatment, including for substance abuse and serious mental illness, all comes down to understanding trauma.
Wright, a longtime public behavioral health expert, joined the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in April 2024 to oversee mental health initiatives. He’s tasked with leading the agency through some of the city’s most pressing challenges: a record-high overdose crisis, staggering rates of depression and anxiety among kids and teens, and widespread mental illness among the city’s homeless population.
Public pressure to address the crisis is elevated, in light of high-profile attacks in the subway system by individuals with serious mental illness and police violence against people in distress….
Wright brings to the job two decades of experience as a public behavioral health official. Before coming to New York, he spent nearly three years as Philadelphia’s deputy commissioner of behavioral health and intellectual disability services. Before that, he directed behavioral health and justice initiatives in Philly.
Trained in forensic psychology, Wright spent over 10 years developing mental health programs for people leaving state psychiatric hospitals and county jails. He learned early that many individuals behind bars are bright and talented and have hopes and dreams that just haven’t yet come to fruition. But they had experienced some sort of trauma that derailed their life course. Understanding that trauma broke down barriers to treatment, he said.
“People are just people,” Wright said. “We need to get past the labels we put on one another.”
Faith and community play a big role in Wright’s career. He is a public speaker who frequently makes appearances at religious events and conferences. He’s also the author of Find Strength in Your Struggle, which explores the relationship between spirituality and mental health challenges…
Learn more about the other panelists in future postings!
This year’s Seminar site is the Albany Marriott located
minutes away from Albany International Airport.
Don’t miss your chance to be part of these very consequential conversations!
Don’t Delay: Register Today!
