Join CommuniCare on Wednesday, November 14, 2012 at the Four Points by Sheraton in Meriden for a statewide conference on wellness integration in behavioral health care settings. Topics include primary care, wellness curricula, and tobacco cessation. More information to come soon, please save the date!

More than 150 people joined CommuniCare on November 16, 2010 for its first Statewide Tobacco Cessation in Behavioral Health Settings conference. CCI, together with the University of Massachusetts offered a full-day training including tracks for administration, direct service and peer personnel. Participants learned about advances in behavioral treatment interventions, new and emerging tobacco products, organizational change, peer intervention and support in club house settings and providing tobacco treatment for individuals with serious mental illness.

The event was sponsored by the CT Department of Public Health, the CT Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and the Alcoa Foundation.

CCI is in the planning stages for its next conference to take place in Spring 2012.

The CommuniCare, Inc. 14th Annual Meeting took place on Wednesday, December 15 at Leon’s Restaurant in New Haven. More than 100 people turned out to hear keynote speaker, Linda Rosenberg, president/CEO of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, and to honor Terri Edelstein, winner of this year’s Denis Olsen Public Advocacy Award.

Roberta Cook, Linda Rosenberg, Barry Kasdan, Marilyn Cormack.

Linda Rosenberg spoke on “Succeeding in the New Healthcare Ecosystem” and focused on the importance of advocacy, collaboration and evidence-based, wrap-around approaches to care.

With more than 30 years of distinguished service in mental health policy, services and system reform, Ms. Rosenberg is one of the nation’s leading mental health experts. A certified social worker, family therapist and psychiatric rehabilitation practitioner, Rosenberg has held faculty appointments at a number of schools of social work and serves on many agency and editorial boards. Since 2004, Rosenberg has been President and CEO of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, a not-for-profit advocacy and educational association of more than 1,700 organizations that provide treatment and support services to 6 million adults and children with mental illnesses and addictions.