The Collaborative Family Healthcare Coalition, founded in 1993, is a diverse group of physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, family therapists and other health care workers, working in both primary and tertiary care settings, who study, implement, and advocate for the collaborative family health care paradigm. It also includes researchers, educators, health care policy workers, and consumer group representatives. The Coalition functions as a communication network and information clearinghouse by holding a biennial conference, maintaining web site database listings and a list server, including a subscription to Families, Systems & Health with membership.

OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT

This is an exciting time in healthcare. For the first time all stakeholders share a common mission: to provide effective and cost-efficient healthcare. Policy makers, purchasers, insurers, providers and patients all want the same thing, but are struggling to integrate the ingredients. At this tipping point the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association will hold its 7th annual conference. Seattle will be the home of a conference that brings together national and local leaders in the movement toward a new model of collaborative, cost-effective healthcare.

October 6 - 9, 2005 in the Emerald City, leaders in healthcare will convene to identify compelling healthcare questions, share the latest research, review innovative best practice designs, and forge significant collaborative partnerships toward lasting solutions. The conference will provide cutting edge perspectives on collaborative family healthcare through stimulating plenary sessions and workshops, formal and informal dialogue and networking opportunities built into the conference schedule, along with the chance for participants to share their own ideas and experiences throughout the conference. We hope that you will submit a proposal.

There will be a day-long Pre-conference Healthcare Summit of national and local healthcare leaders and others interested in advancing integrated healthcare solutions. This summit will examine the current status of healthcare and will provide an opportunity for multidisciplinary constituency groups to create collaborative bridges and identify concrete steps for the future. This is a conference you don't want to miss.

Conference Objectives:

• Assemble creative minds and motivated stakeholders who are committed to healthcare change.
• Provide opportunities to teach and learn about best practices in collaborative family healthcare:
  

  *	share concrete skills, practical applications, wisdom, perspective, experiences.
  *	explore the models of teaching collaborative care to health/medical and mental health professionals.
  *	articulate the conceptual and research base of collaborative care.
  *	discover the policy, administrative and funding issues related to collaborative family health care.

• Stimulate thinking about collaborative family healthcare: What is it? What works? Where is it headed? How can we best get there?
• Facilitate networks of mutual support for this important work.
• Provide a chance to enjoy others in this broad, grassroots "community”.

Go to the guidelines and electronic submission form page.

Check out the CFHA list serve or our web site www.cfha.net for updates.

Executive Program Committee: Tina Schermer-Sellers, MS (Chair); Larry Mauksch, M.Ed; Alexander Blount EdD; Denise Krouse, MC; Michelle Naden, PhD; Bruce Amundson, MD; Robin Gray, PhD

OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT

Healthcare is all too often fragmented across disciplinary lines, different diseases and conditions, home, clinic, community, and hospital care, the "mind body split," and even between individual patients and their families and communities. A grassroots movement has been gathering momentum in many places, in many forms, and for many years to achieve a bold mission and Audacious Goal: To pull healthcare together across the chasms so often encountered by patients, families, caregivers, and healthcare systems – and to reduce the clinical, service, relationship, and financial penalties of healthcare that is fragmented in all of these ways.

This Grassroots Movement is comprised of people from many disciplines and parts of the country and the world who have given it many names – collaborative care, shared care, integrated care, biopsychosocial care, prepared practice teams, patient-centered care, or simply the vision of family medicine and community health – along with "informed, activated patients" and families at the core. Whether people of this movement recognize each other or not, a large community and constituency is dedicated to these efforts.

This conference is to be a Community Meeting of anyone interested in the audacious goal of pulling healthcare together. It will be used to provide cutting edge information from leading presenters in plenary sessions, formal and informal dialogue and networking opportunities built into the conference schedule, and platforms to present your ideas and experiences throughout the conference. We hope that you will submit a proposal.

There will be day-long series of Pre-conference Workshops teaching the basics of collaborative practice on Thursday, October 21st. The track for medical practitioners will focus on how to integrate mental health practitioners into a primary care medical setting. The track for mental health practitioners will focus on the basics of mental health practice in primary care. Both groups will come together in the afternoon for training in the routines and protocols of collaborative practice. Each track will be led by a physician/mental health clinician team including nationally known experts in collaborative practice.

Conference Objectives:

• Bring together and engage multiple professionals and other stakeholders in healthcare
• Provide opportunities to teach and learn about best practices in collaborative family healthcare:
  - sharing concrete skills, practical applications, wisdom, perspective, experiences
  - expanding the knowledge base or collaborative healthcare curriculum
  - articulating the conceptual and research base of collaborative care
• Stimulate thinking about what collaborative family healthcare is, what it could be, where it can and needs to be applied, how it works, and how we can make it work better
• Facilitate support to one another in these efforts
• Provide a chance to enjoy others in this broad, grassroots community

Executive Program Committee:
Thom Davis, PhD (Chair); Mac Baird, MD, MS
Alexander Blount EdD; Richard Heinrich, MD
Jennifer Hodgson, PhD, LMFT
Cate McKegney, MD
Tina Sellers, MS
Rae Shilling, PhD

The cornerstone of this decade of healthcare delivery will be sustainable, collaborative partnerships that include all the key stakeholders in implementing a system of care that is relevant and respectful to the people who are being served. However it is configured, the biopsychosocial paradigm is in the mainstream of emerging trends with enormous promise for those who have the skills and the motivation to work within it. This working conference will bring together beginners, experienced teachers, seasoned clinicians, researchers, healthcare administrators, and innovative program designers to prepare and expand our knowledge, skills, and wisdom of the biopsychosocial paradigm, both in the United States and abroad.

OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT

The collaborative family healthcare paradigm has moved from pioneering experiments and small beginnings to mainstream practice in many large scale organizations and community-based care systems. Our membership of diverse groups of physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, family therapists, teachers, administrators, and others vitally concerned about healthcare is evidence of the broad areas of interest and practice based on this paradigm.

The recent change in our name -- from Coalition to Association - "reflects our principal focus on our membership rather than on inter-organizational relations. It reflects the goal of strengthening, for each of our members, their knowledge about and the use of the eco-systemic paradigm in their own work setting" (Bloch & Doherty, Family, Systems & Health, Spring 2001.)

The Fifth Conference (and our first Biennial Conference) focuses on the needs of practitioners, recognizing that continued change is necessary and with the awareness that, in many ways, the work of our organization is just beginning.

As in prior years, this conference is a Working Conference designed to stimulate active and meaningful participation. The Conference will bring together beginners, experienced teachers, seasoned clinicians, researchers, healthcare administrators, and innovative program designers to share and explore the practical experiences of the implementation of the biopsychosocial paradigm, both in the United States and abroad.

Conference Objectives:

• Stretch your thinking about what collaborative family healthcare is and what it might be, about where it might be applied and where it needs to be applied, about how it works and how we can make it work better.
• Provide opportunities for you to teach and learn about best practices in collaborative family healthcare: expanding the knowledge base; developing a collaborative healthcare curriculum; articulating the conceptual and research base of collaboration; sharing concrete skills, practical applications, wisdom, perspective, and experiences.
• Give you a chance to enjoy fellow members and friends in a relaxing setting.

Abstract Themes
Focus on best practices in a wide range of areas and topics, including:

• Training, learning, and development in collaborative family healthcare.
• Examples of systems redesign to support in collaborative family healthcare.
• Community-based collaboration to improve population health.
• Working with healthcare and other systems (e.g., community social services).
• Identifying and serving under-served populations.
• Collaborative family healthcare services focused on chronic illness.
• Public health models for working across populations and across systems
• Operational & financial systems to support collaborative care
• Clinical & organizational consultation to help you with your individual needs and to help you help your colleagues

About the Conference

It has been evident for some time that a world-wide revolution in healthcare has been taking place, perhaps more visible in the U.S. but not limited to that locality by any means. Many professionals felt cut adrift by these changes, without clear guidelines as to how best serve their patients whose human and mental health needs were regularly neglected despite the severe cost of this neglect to the healthcare system itself. Seven years ago, starting from a base in family systems therapy and primary care medicine, our group began to explore a new paradigm: the creation of behavioral and biomedical teams working together with patients and families. Today, our early optimism seems justified. The collaborative family healthcare paradigm has moved from the periphery into the mainstream in a number of settings ranging from small practices through large HMO's, from primary care to complex tertiary care situations. It has demonstrated its ability to invigorate staff and patients alike, to attend to previously intractable problems and to do so in a cost effective, ethical and humane fashion.

The Fourth Annual CFHcC Conference will bring together beginners, experienced teachers, seasoned clinicians, researchers, healthcare administrators, and innovative program designers to share and explore the practical experiences of the implementation of the biopsychosocial paradigm, both in the United States and abroad.

This year's conference is designed to continue building the knowledge base and the networks that are making collaborative family healthcare a mainstream reality. This is a communal effort. Mark the dates and consider yourself an ambassador. We are building our own future.

Keynote Speakers

• "Integrative Collaborative Care is the Future"

  Nicholas A. Cummings, Ph.D
  Distinguished Professor, Dept of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno & President, Foundation for Behavioral Health

• "Changing Clinic Cultures"

  Larry Mauksch, M.Ed
  Marillac Clinic, Immediate Past Family Health Counselor & Collbaorative Care Consultant

  *Thom Davis, Ph.D
  HealthPartners, Senior Manager, Primary Care Mental Health

• "Family, Systems & Chronic Illness"

  Carol Levine, M.A.
  Director, Families & Healthcare Project, United Hospital Fund

• "Future Oriented Panel: a highly interactive session with panel and audience participation"

  Margaret Cotroneo, RN, PhD
  Margy Heldring, PhD
  Susan McDaniel, PhD
  Macaran Baird, MD, MS
  Donald A. Bloch, MD

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Sponsored by the Sociey of Teachers of Family Medicine in cooperation with the Collaborative Family HealthCare Coalition

The STFM Group on the Family invites you to attend the Conference on Families and Health Care, March 4-8, 1998, at beautiful Kiawah Island, SC. After 17 years of sponsoring the Annual Family in Family Medicine Conference, STFM welcomes the Collaborative Family HealthCare Coalition as a cooperative organization in this year's meeting. Another chnage this year is in the conference name to more clearly reflect the meeting's content and to be more inclusive of health care professionals in other disciplines.

The 1998 conferenc theme, "Working With Families Across Disciplines," reflects the important contribution all health professionals make to individuals and their families. There is exciting family work being done in pediatrics, internal medicine, social work, psychology, as well as in marriage and family therapy and family medicine. In many ways our work is more similar than it is different, even though we are often separated by artificial divisions. We have much to teach each other.

Featuring Categories For Submission:

• Peer Sessions
• Lecture Discussions
• Seminars
• Workshops
• Special Topic Breakfasts
• Preconference Sessions