Lessons of COVID-19: Staff Dedication and Skill Key to Success

The Institute for Community Living (ICL) compass shines brightly on our North Star: “People get better with us.” This simple yet profound message has given us meaning and purpose during unprecedented social upheaval. We know, empirically, that what matters most and keeps people in their job is...

Integrating Health and Behavioral Health: Consider All the Dimensions

A discussion of integrated care should actually start by redefining the term itself. Integrated care is commonly considered the weaving together of physical and behavioral health, but experience has shown that this definition limits the discussion to two dimensions. What dimension is missing? What...

Collaborating to Improve Children’s Health Care: The Time is Now

In 2015, New York State’s Medicaid Redesign Team (MRT) issued a “Roadmap for Medicaid Payment Reform” that laid out a path for dramatic and innovative change in the way the state financed and administered healthcare. Initially, MRT took on a volume-based approach to health care through the...

The East New York Health Hub: Realizing the Promise of Whole Health

Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing focus on health care reform and bending the cost curve through a combination of new approaches including social determinants of health, trauma-informed treatment, health equity, patient engagement and integrated care. While these elements have...

Trauma-Informed Care Leads to More Integrated Care

Our inattention to the emotional dimensions of health and illness is a public health perfect storm, especially for the mentally ill. This group of people experiences high rates of illness, suffers greatly, uses an enormous amount of our precious healthcare dollars, and dies 25 years earlier than...

Towards Seamless Integration: Advocating for Reform

Many people with serious mental illnesses have difficulty accessing primary care or do not feel comfortable in primary care settings, for a host of reasons. Often, they have experienced trauma, resulting in trust issues that impact their ability to form relationships with new providers. As a...

The State of Children’s Mental Health and Associated Costs of a Fragmented System

Past public policy has focused mostly on children’s mental health issues—and with good reason. While 1 out of 10 children has a serious emotional disturbance, only 20% ever receive treatment. Children with mental health issues have the highest school dropout rate among all disability groups,...

It’s About Time

Back in the height of what was called the “Humane Care” period, state hospital institutions took care, to the limits of their abilities, of the full spectrum of people’s needs. While one can certainly look back and question the quality of the care and the enormous personal consequences of...

Kids Do Get Better: Values Driven Inpatient Care

In New York State, and across the country, the story of how mental health care began begins with inpatient care provided in large institutions located in a bucolic rural environment. This “humane treatment,” in its day, was considered a progressive avant-garde form of care. For decades this...