Nominator: Sarah Stookey

Nominator: Elizabeth Zeidler Schreiter

Nominator: Matthew Tolliver

Nominator: Patty Gibson
It is my distinct honor to nominate Kim Shuler, LCSW, Chief Executive Officer of the Arkansas Behavioral Health Integration Network (ABHIN), for the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association’s Don Bloch Award.

Over the past seven years, I have had the privilege of working alongside Kim as her colleague and co-founder of ABHIN. I have watched her transform an ambitious vision into a statewide movement that is advancing behavioral health integration across Arkansas. Few individuals embody Don Bloch’s spirit of innovation, intellectual curiosity, collaboration, and relationship-centered leadership more completely.

Kim is an extraordinary leader because she is first an exceptional learner. Throughout her career, she has continually sought out the best thinking in integrated care, beginning with early training in integrated behavioral health from Dr. Parinda Khatri, Dennis Freeman and John Fortney at Cherokee Health Systems, Primary Care Behavioral Health training with Drs. Patty Robinson and Kirk Strosahl, and more recently Whole Health Wellness training through the Heartland Whole Health Institute. She has consistently translated that learning into innovative, practical solutions that strengthen healthcare systems, develop future leaders, and improve patient care.

As CEO, Kim has grown ABHIN into Arkansas’s leading organization dedicated to advancing behavioral health integration through implementation support, workforce development, education, and systems transformation. Under her leadership, ABHIN has earned national recognition, including the National Rural Health Community Star Award in 2024 and recent recognition in the national Rural Health Information Hub, The Rural Monitor, for expanding behavioral health access in rural Arkansas. This year, ABHIN also hosted its fourth annual Behavioral Health Integration Conference the largest to date, convening healthcare leaders from across the country to advance collaborative, evidence-based care.

Recognizing that integrated care depends on a well-prepared workforce, Kim has made workforce development a cornerstone of her leadership. Through grant funding from the Arkansas Blue & You Foundation, she established onsite Behavioral Health Care Management training opportunities for social work interns from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Arkansas, creating a pipeline of future integrated behavioral health leaders for Arkansas.

What distinguishes Kim most, however, is not simply what she has built—it is how she leads. She has a remarkable ability to see potential in people before they see it in themselves. She brings together individuals from different disciplines, organizations, and perspectives, helping them discover common purpose and achieve far more together than they could alone. She mentors generously, listens deeply, and leads with humility, integrity, and genuine respect for every member of the healthcare team. These are the qualities that have inspired countless colleagues and partners to become champions for team-based integrated behavioral health care.

Kim’s leadership has strengthened the infrastructure for integrated behavioral health across Arkansas while improving access to whole-person care for rural and underserved communities. Her influence extends far beyond the programs she has created; it lives on in the organizations she has strengthened, the professionals she has mentored, and the patients and families whose lives have been improved through collaborative care.

The Don Bloch Award recognizes individuals whose careers are defined by innovation, mentorship, collaboration, and enduring contributions to integrated care. Kim Shuler exemplifies these qualities every day. It is with my highest respect and strongest endorsement that I recommend her for this well-deserved recognition.

Nominator: Melissa Pearl
I have had the privilege of working alongside Dr. Sarah Dewane over the past four years at Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center (ANHC), and I continue to be inspired by her leadership and the impact she has had on both our organization and the patients we serve. As a colleague, I have had the opportunity to partner closely with her work, and she is someone I deeply respect and strive to learn from.

During this time, Dr. Dewane has progressed from Director of Behavioral Health to Chief Integration Officer, and that evolution reflects not just career advancement, but the meaningful and sustained impact she has had in shaping how integrated care is delivered at ANHC.

At ANHC, our mission centers on improving the health and well-being of our community through accessible, high-quality, and integrated care. Dr. Dewane does not simply support that mission, she lives it. She understands, at a fundamental level, why integrated care is essential to a person’s well-being, and she consistently brings that purpose into focus in her work and leadership.

Dr. Dewane exemplifies the innovative and systems-level thinking that defined Dr. Don Bloch. She has a rare ability to synthesize clinical, operational, and community-based perspectives into a cohesive vision that is both strategic and actionable. She helps those around her step back and see the full picture, connecting the many moving parts of healthcare delivery in a way that strengthens outcomes for patients and teams alike.

What I admire most is her ability to ground complex ideas in purpose. With a steady and thoughtful voice, she ties strategy back to mission, helping others understand not just what we are doing, but why it matters.

Dr. Dewane consistently demonstrates the ability to turn vision into meaningful progress. She has played a central role in growing and strengthening our integrated behavioral health services over the years, helping to embed integration into the fabric of how care is delivered at ANHC.

She is now building on that work by expanding patient navigation and care management services, recognizing that true integration requires supporting patients across the full continuum of care.

Her leadership reflects strong judgment and balance. She knows when to push work forward to maintain momentum and when to step back and allow others the space to demonstrate their intentions and capabilities. This approach not only moves initiatives forward but builds confidence and accountability across teams.

Dr. Dewane is, at her core, a connector in the truest sense of the word. She has a natural ability to bring people together across disciplines and perspectives, creating alignment where it may not have existed before. I have seen her facilitate connections that move work forward quickly and meaningfully, often by simply ensuring the right people are engaged at the right time.

Her relationships are grounded in trust, shared purpose, and authenticity. She knows how to gently push collaboration when it is needed, while also creating space for others to lead and contribute. This balance has been instrumental in breaking down silos and building a more unified, patient-centered system at ANHC.

Dr. Dewane’s work reflects the spirit of the Don Bloch Award in every sense. She is thoughtful, action-oriented, and deeply relational in her approach to leadership. She embodies what it means to advance integrated care, not just through strategy, but through how she engages with people, builds systems, and stays grounded in mission.

From my perspective as a colleague, she represents the kind of leader who elevates those around her while strengthening the systems we all rely on. She is someone I look up to, and someone whose impact is felt not just in what she has built, but in how she brings others along in the work.

For these reasons, I strongly support Dr. Sarah Dewane as a highly deserving recipient of the Don Bloch Award.

Diane Powers received 2 nominations

Nominator: Shanda Wells

I am honored to nominate Diane Powers for this award in recognition of her extraordinary leadership and lasting contributions to the field of Collaborative Care. With over 30 years of experience, Diane has demonstrated unwavering dedication to improving integrated care delivery. As a co-founder of the AIMS Center in 2004, she has played a pivotal role in advancing Collaborative Care as a national model, helping countless organizations and providers successfully adopt this evidence-based approach. Beyond her deep expertise, Diane is widely respected for her warmth, generosity, and ability to bring people together—qualities that have empowered and inspired colleagues across the country. Her impact is both far-reaching and personal, making her exceptionally deserving of this recognition.

Nominator: The AIMS Center

Nominator: Jessica Lyons
It is my distinct honor to nominate Julie Luzarraga, LICSW, DSCW, Johnathan Giles LICSW, and Anaja Arthur, MPH, the leadership team of Dignity in Healing Collective, for the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association’s Collaborative Care Model Award.

At a time when healthcare systems across the country are working to expand access to behavioral health, Julie, Johnathan, and Anaja have demonstrated that meaningful innovation requires more than implementing an evidence-based model. Through Dignity in Healing Collective, they have shown how the Collaborative Care Model can be thoughtfully adapted to meet the needs of communities that have historically experienced barriers to equitable, culturally responsive behavioral healthcare while maintaining fidelity to the core principles that make Collaborative Care successful.

What distinguishes this team is that they are not simply implementing Collaborative Care—they are expanding who has the opportunity to participate in it. Through Dignity in Healing Collective’s integrated focus on workforce development, training, technical assistance, and policy advocacy, they are creating new pathways into behavioral healthcare for individuals whose lived experience, cultural knowledge, and community connections have too often been overlooked by traditional workforce models.

Their vision recognizes that expanding access to behavioral healthcare requires expanding and diversifying the workforce itself. By lowering barriers to entry, providing structured training and mentorship, and partnering with healthcare organizations to implement Collaborative Care, they are building sustainable pipelines of behavioral health professionals who better reflect and understand the communities they serve. Their work demonstrates that workforce innovation and clinical excellence are not competing priorities—they are mutually reinforcing.

Equally important, Julie, Johnathan, and Anaja have shown that fidelity to the Collaborative Care Model can coexist with deep cultural responsiveness and authentic community partnership. Rather than expecting communities to adapt to healthcare systems, they have challenged healthcare systems to become more representative, accessible, and responsive to the lived experiences of patients. Their work offers an important blueprint for implementing Collaborative Care in ways that advance both clinical excellence and health equity.

Beyond direct implementation, Dignity in Healing Collective has become an invaluable resource to organizations seeking to build sustainable integrated behavioral health programs. Through technical assistance, workforce training, consultation, mentorship, and education, they generously share their expertise and consistently elevate the broader field. Their leadership reflects the true spirit of Collaborative Care—bringing together diverse perspectives, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and creating systems that improve care for patients while strengthening primary care teams.

I have had the privilege of collaborating with Julie, Johnathan, and Anaja through our shared work advancing Collaborative Care implementation, and I have witnessed firsthand the qualities that make them exceptional leaders. They consistently approach partnerships with humility, generosity, and an unwavering commitment to improving patient care. Rather than viewing other organizations as competitors, they freely share knowledge, mentor colleagues, celebrate the success of others, and work collaboratively to strengthen the national Collaborative Care community. Their willingness to invest in the broader field, often without seeking recognition, reflects the values that CFHA has long championed.

The impact of Dignity in Healing Collective extends well beyond the organizations they directly support. Their work is helping shape the future of Collaborative Care by demonstrating that sustainable implementation depends not only on evidence-based clinical workflows, but also on investing in people, communities, and the next generation of the behavioral health workforce. They have created a model that is both innovative and replicable—one that other organizations across the country can learn from as they strive to deliver more equitable, integrated care.

Julie Luzarraga, Johnathan Giles, and Anaja Arthur exemplify the collaborative leadership, innovation, mentorship, and commitment to health equity that the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association seeks to recognize through this award. Their collective contributions have strengthened Collaborative Care implementation, expanded access to integrated behavioral healthcare, and inspired others working to transform primary care.

For these reasons, I offer my strongest and most enthusiastic recommendation that Julie Luzarraga, Johnathan Giles, and Anaja Arthur receive the CFHA Collaborative Care Model Award. Their leadership has advanced not only their own organization, but the Collaborative Care movement as a whole, and they are exceptionally deserving of this national recognition.

Nominator: Katie Steele
Dear CFHA Awards Committee,

It is my honor to nominate my colleague, Nicole Portrude, for this award recognizing outstanding contributions to health care through the Collaborative Care Model. Nicole’s commitment to expanding access to evidence-based mental health care has been evident throughout her career and her impact spans nearly every service area this award recognizes: practice, practice engagement, implementation, education, mentorship, and community building.

Nicole’s dedication to Collaborative Care is grounded in deep, hands-on experience. Before joining the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, she spent more than five years implementing CoCM programs in health systems across the United States. She first served on the front lines as a Behavioral Health Care Manager (BHCM), then managed a team of BHCMs, and ultimately led Collaborative Care initiatives across multiple states. This progression from direct practice to program leadership gives her a rare and valuable perspective: she understands the model not only as a framework to be implemented, but as daily clinical work carried out by real teams serving real patients.

Over the past three years at the Meadows Institute, Nicole has done immense work building and scaling integrated care programs across Texas and nationally. She leads CoCM implementations with a focus on both fidelity to the evidence base and genuine partner satisfaction, ensuring that health systems adopt the model and sustain fidelity to it. The result of her work is measurable: more communities with access to timely, effective, team-based mental health care.

Nicole is also a gifted educator whose training work touches every role on the Collaborative Care team. She has led trainings for primary care providers to build CoCM champions and secure the clinical buy-in needed for a successful program, and she has designed and delivered both clinical and administrative trainings for BHCMs to strengthen their practice. She has contributed to nationally, publicly available trainings serving all members of the CoCM care team, and she participates in national workgroups advancing integrated care across states, populations, and specialty settings.

What sets Nicole apart, however, is her investment in the people who make Collaborative Care work. Recognizing that BHCMs often work in relative isolation within their organizations, Nicole created and hosts a monthly BHCM Connection Space – a collaborative forum designed specifically for BHCMs working within CoCM. Drawing regular attendees from health systems across the country, this space gives BHCMs a dedicated opportunity to connect with peers, share insights, troubleshoot challenges, and learn from one another’s experiences. Whether attendees are brand new to the model or seasoned in their roles, Nicole has built a community that strengthens the CoCM workforce itself. By investing in the BHCM workforce through this act of mentorship, Nicole is strengthening the development, retention, and sustainment of Collaborative Care far beyond any single program or health system.

Nicole embodies the values at the heart of CFHA’s mission. She is a passionate champion of healthcare transformation, comprehensive and cost-effective models of care, and most importantly, reducing health disparities to improve access to every community. Nicole has a License in Clinical Psychology from the Universidad Del Desarrollo of Santiago Chile. She brings clinical rigor, cultural humility, and genuine warmth to everything she does.

In short, Nicole has advanced the Collaborative Care Model through her practice, her leadership, her scaling of programs across Texas and the nation, and her creation of a thriving national community of BHCMs. I can think of no one more deserving of this recognition.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Katie Steele

Nominator: Teresa Lopez

Dear Members of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association Awards Committee,

It is my privilege to write in enthusiastic support of Dr. Rachel Weir for recognition by the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association for her exceptional leadership in advancing the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) and integrated behavioral health.

As Program Director of Behavioral Health Integration at University of Utah Health, I have had the opportunity to work closely with Dr. Weir in her role as the Chief of Mental Health Integration, and have witnessed firsthand the extraordinary impact of her leadership. She has been instrumental in expanding Collaborative Care across our health system by championing measurement-based care, strengthening psychiatric consultation within primary care, and fostering meaningful collaboration among primary care, psychiatry, behavioral health clinicians, and operational leaders. Under her leadership, CoCM has expanded across 11 primary care clinics and also in women’s health departments. In addition, she oversees all the psychiatric consultants practicing in CoCM and the residency programming as well. Her vision has helped transform integrated behavioral health from an innovative model into a sustainable standard of care with a robust education for future psychiatrists.

Dr. Weir’s influence extends well beyond University of Utah Health. She is a co-founder of CALL-UP, Utah’s statewide child psychiatry access program, serves on the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Mental Health Advisory Committee and the American Psychiatric Association’s Integrated Care Committee, and is a national advocate for expanding integrated behavioral health models. Her leadership in the statewide Collaborative Care Implementation ECHO has expanded the reach of evidence-based integrated behavioral health well beyond a single institution, strengthening the capacity of clinicians throughout Utah to care for children and families.

She has also advanced the field through scholarship and thought leadership, including Proposal for an Integrated Care Training Framework (2026) and What Can General Psychiatry Learn From Integrated Care? (2026), which highlights how integrated psychiatric practice can help address workforce shortages while improving access to high-quality behavioral health care.

Beyond her many accomplishments, what distinguishes Dr. Weir most is her leadership. She leads with humility, integrity, and a genuine commitment to collaboration. She consistently empowers multidisciplinary teams, encourages innovation, and keeps the focus on improving care for patients. Her ability to unite people around a shared vision has strengthened our health system and inspired those of us fortunate enough to work alongside her.

Dr. Weir exemplifies the values of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association through her innovation, collaboration, scholarship, and unwavering dedication to improving behavioral health care. It is my highest honor to recommend her for this well-deserved recognition.

Sincerely,

Teresa Lopez, LCSW

Program Director, Behavioral Health Integration

University of Utah Health

Nominator: Megan Sogn
It is my strong privilege to nominate Cassandra Sanow-Hansen for the Collaborative Care Model Award. Cassandra has demonstrated exceptional leadership, innovation, and unwavering commitment to advancing the CoCM model within the CentraCare system and beyond.

From the earliest stages of implementation, Cassandra has been a driving force in bringing CoCM to life within CentraCare. As one of the first leaders to champion this model, she invested significant time and effort into understanding best practices and ensuring thoughtful integration into our system. She collaborated closely with external organizations, learning from their successes, and thoughtfully adapting those strategies to strengthen our own program.

Cassandra’s dedication to building sustainable infrastructure is particularly noteworthy. She has been a persistent and effective advocate for the development of an EPIC build to support CoCM, demonstrating resilience and determination despite slow progress. Her ability to maintain momentum and engagement throughout this process has been instrumental in moving implementation forward.

A natural leader and educator, Cassandra has played a central role in preparing others to successfully deliver CoCM. She has coordinated leaders across the system to develop and operate the model, and she has taken on the critical responsibility of training and mentoring interns. In addition, she has designed curriculum and led training sessions to equip Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH) providers as they onboard to CoCM, ensuring they are confident and competent in applying the model in their clinical practice.

Cassandra’s influence extends beyond CentraCare. She has actively engaged in advocacy efforts at both the state and federal levels, working directly with Minnesota representatives to promote legislation that supports the implementation and sustainability of CoCM. Her collaboration with the Department of Human Services has strengthened partnerships and advanced state-level support for this important model of care.

She has also demonstrated strong collaboration within CentraCare by partnering with system leaders to successfully secure grants that support EPIC development and overall program implementation. These efforts have had a tangible impact on expanding access to care.

Cassandra’s vision for CoCM is especially meaningful in addressing rural mental health disparities. As a Behavioral Health Access Manager, she consistently champions the model as a critical solution to improving access and outcomes for underserved populations. Through her advocacy and education, she has influenced primary care providers across the system to recognize CoCM as a standard of care.

In every aspect of her work, Cassandra exemplifies the spirit of collaboration, innovation, and service that this award represents. Her dedication has not only strengthened the CoCM program at CentraCare but has also contributed to broader efforts to expand access to high-quality behavioral health care.

For these reasons, I wholeheartedly nominate Cassandra Sanow-Hansen for the Collaborative Care Model Award.

Nominator: Katie Mortara
I am nominated Dr. Nicole McKelvey for the Collaborative Care Model award for her outstanding work while she was at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Dr. McKelvey is an experienced and compassionate psychologist, who worked during her five+ years at St. Christopher’s dedicated to integrating behavioral health into our medical clinics. Dr. McKelvey and the psychology team were integrated into our specialty clinics here, Dr. McKelvey specifically in Endocrinology and Gastroenterology. She was committed to education and training of all hospital staff (whether that be residents, doctors, social workers, etc) of the impacts of behavioral health on medical diagnoses and vice versa. Dr. McKelvey served as the training director for our hospital for psychology doctoral internship.

Nominator: Jesse Weinberg
Dear CFHA Awards Committee,

It is my privilege to nominate Amy Shields for the Collaborative Care Award. Few people I have worked with embody the spirit of the Collaborative Care Model, rigorous clinical practice married to operational excellence, as completely as Amy does, and even fewer have done the hands-on, often invisible work required to bring high-quality CoCM to patients at scale.

I have had the privilege of working alongside Amy as part of the founding operations team at April Health, where she has been instrumental in building our Collaborative Care program from the ground up. When she joined, CoCM at April Health was a model on paper and a handful of early clinic partners. Today, largely through her clinical leadership and operational discipline, our program supports more than 50 clinics across the country, delivering integrated behavioral health to thousands of patients who would otherwise have no access to psychiatric care within their primary care home. That trajectory, from concept to a national footprint, does not happen without someone who understands both the clinical fidelity the model demands and the operational machinery required to sustain it.

What distinguishes Amy is that she is genuinely fluent in both worlds. On the clinical side, she has shaped how our care managers are trained, supervised, and held to the measurement-based-care standards that make CoCM effective: systematic screening, registry-driven follow-up, psychiatric consultation, and treat-to-target accountability. On the operational side, she has designed the workflows, staffing models, and quality systems that allow those clinical standards to hold up as the program scales across dozens of practices with different EMRs, payer mixes, and patient populations. She has an unusual ability to translate the evidence base behind CoCM into workflows that real clinics can actually adopt and sustain.

This was not Amy’s first time building a Collaborative Care program. Before April Health, she led the program at MindDoula, where she developed the clinical and operational foundation that gave her the rare, practiced expertise she brings today. That combination of experience, having stood up and led CoCM in more than one organization, is precisely what the field needs more of as Collaborative Care moves from a promising model to a national standard of care.

Beyond her technical skill, Amy reflects the values CFHA champions. She is a mentor to the care managers and clinicians who work with her, a tireless advocate for patients who have historically fallen through the cracks between medical and behavioral health, and a generous colleague who makes everyone around her better at this work. She approaches CoCM not as a billing mechanism but as a mission to make integrated, whole-person care the standard everywhere.

Amy represents the very best of what the Collaborative Care community aspires to: clinical rigor, operational ingenuity, and a deep, durable commitment to expanding access to integrated care. I cannot think of a more deserving recipient, and I am proud to offer her my strongest possible recommendation.

Sincerely,

Jesse Weinberg

Nominator: Patrick Luizzo
Jill Donelan, PsyD, has spent her entire career advancing accessible behavioral healthcare, and more recently the Collaborative Care Model. As the leader of Mirah’s clinical implementation team, she continues to drive some of the most complex CoCM rollouts in the country, spanning a wide range of care settings.

At Mirah, we joke that Jill is THE CoCM. She’s the one keeping the clinical, operational, and technical pieces from drifting into silos. For our customers, she partners deeply with clinical teams to design the workflows, measurement protocols, care pathways, and security protocols that turn CoCM from a concept into sustainable, everyday practice.

Jill’s work goes well beyond the initial launch of a program. She and her team stay in constant contact with these organizations, helping them overcome roadblocks as their programs scale. That work consistently sets organizations and their patients up for long-term success, which is how the model survives and grows over decades rather than fading after an initial pilot. Through her implementation work she trains, supervises, and mentors clinical teams every day, translating the evidence base behind CoCM into practical guidance that frontline providers can actually use.

Jill’s contributions also extend to the scholarly and educational side of the field. She co-authored the Pediatric Collaborative Care Pathway alongside contributors from Concert, Meadows, and AIMS, helping to codify best practices that other teams can adopt. She also recently contributed to Meadow’s White Paper: Scalable Strategies to Expand the Behavioral Health Workforce.

What stands out most is Jill’s relentless commitment to the model itself. She is focused on making CoCM accessible, measurable, and sustainable wherever it is delivered. That commitment reflects CFHA’s mission of promoting comprehensive, cost-effective, integrated care, and it is why I am proud to nominate her for the Collaborative Care Model Award.

Nominator: Max Zubatsky
Dear CFHA Awards Review Committee-

This nomination is for Lisa Zak-Hunter for the Family Oriented Care Award in CFHA. Lisa has been a leader in family-centered care for her entire career, balancing clinical, research, training, and community initiatives in her positions. She has truly embraced systems thinking in her work at the University of Minnesota with the training of physicians, residents, and students.

Lisa was one of the early leaders of the Medical Family Therapy Consortium, a group that helped advanced internships and fellowships in Medical Family Therapy and integrated care sites. Her work has helped advanced so many individuals seek advanced training at Family Medicine Residencies, healthcare organizations, and academic medicine affiliations. The consortium has grown over the years to expand its MedFT presence across several states. Additionally, Lisa formed the “MedFT Summit” which is a pre-con event before the annual CFHA conference. This event has helped gather family-centered professionals around the country to help discuss pressing advocacy and policy topics.

Lisa has also been very active in her training and research roles in the field. She is currently an Associate Editor for the Families and Health Section of Families, Systems and Health journal. She has been a productive writer in the field on family care and integrated behavioral health topics. She has also been a strong resident trainer and teacher in family systems topics at the U of M. She has provided numerous presentations and training on her family centered skills for residents at local and national conference.

Overall, Lisa embodies the goals and mission of this award. She will continue to advance the field in many positive ways. She is very deserving and has made big impacts in CFHA and the field as a whole.

Best,

Max Zubatsky

Nominator: Kaya Fitzke

Nominator: Betül K. Cansever

Nominator: Susan Franks

Nominator: Poone Haghani Tehrani

My career has been dedicated to advancing the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model through clinical and educational innovation, systems leadership, and scholarship. I have focused on developing sustainable, replicable infrastructure, advancing workforce development, and promoting broader adoption of integrated behavioral health through collaborative relationships.

As the psychiatrist leading PCBH services at the University of New Mexico Sandoval Regional Medical Center (UNM SRMC) since 2017, I have directed the development and expansion of a PCBH program that substantially advanced behavioral health care within the Family Practice clinic. This involved strategic planning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and continuous quality improvement. Working closely with leaders in primary care, psychology, nursing, and administration, I designed and implemented a sustainable PCBH model that incorporated measurement-based, treat-to-target care, patient-centered team care, standardized referral guidelines, and workflows. These efforts improved access to quality behavioral health care for the region’s underserved population, strengthened care coordination, and promoted cost-effective, evidence-based care, and resulted in increased utilization of these services by both providers and patients. Some of these processes were subsequently adopted by other integrated behavioral health services within the clinic.

I also led quality and patient safety initiatives, including implementation of standardized suicide risk screening in primary care, improvements in suicide risk documentation, and development of a psychology-led group intervention that expanded behavioral health services within primary care and other ambulatory care clinics. Simultaneously, I have served on the Behavioral Health Care Primary Care Integration Forum, a coalition of behavioral health, psychiatry, and primary care providers and leaders dedicated to advancing integrated care across the UNM Health System. The forum’s collaborative work helped secure state funding to support expansion of PCBH across the UNM Health System.

A central focus of my career has been workforce development and advocacy through education. I believe that sustainable implementation of the PCBH model depends on preparing clinicians, administrators, and organizational leaders to understand, advocate for, and effectively practice integrated care. To support this goal, I completed the UNM Medical Education Scholars Program and developed, implemented, and published an integrated behavioral health curriculum for psychiatry residents aligned with Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requirements. Psychiatry residents have participated in this curriculum continuously since 2017.

My background in medical education has enabled me to tailor educational strategies to diverse learners and settings within the UNM Health System and the state of New Mexico. I have adapted this curriculum into statewide training sessions and workshops for practicing healthcare professionals, including psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, internal medicine physicians, social workers, and rural primary care clinicians. I expanded it into an advanced elective curriculum for senior psychiatry residents, first offered in 2025. In collaboration with primary care leadership, I helped develop a multidisciplinary clinical rotation for family medicine residents that integrates general psychiatry, perinatal psychiatry, and health psychology. I am partnering with the newly established UNM Social Work Program to develop hybrid PCBH educational content. The impact of these educational initiatives is reflected in published educational scholarship, ongoing research, and continued dissemination. Preliminary outcomes from a social work workshop have been accepted for poster presentation at the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) 2026 conference, providing an opportunity to share these educational innovations with the broader PCBH community.

Mentorship has been an integral part of my service to the PCBH model. Through direct clinical supervision, curriculum development, and longitudinal mentoring of interdisciplinary learners and practitioners, I have sought to enhance the quality of behavioral health care within the primary care setting and prepare future clinicians to deliver collaborative, evidence-based integrated behavioral health care and become leaders within their own health systems.

Recognizing that effective communication is fundamental to successful collaboration in integrated care settings, I have dedicated significant effort to developing communication and feedback skills among healthcare professionals. As Director of the “Communication in the Trenches” workshop for medical students and residents and as the Associate Director of the Feedback Initiative within the UNM School of Medicine Office for Continuous Professional Learning, I developed and facilitated communication and feedback workshops for learners and clinicians across the health sciences campus. These principles have informed my mentorship of primary care providers and my work with interdisciplinary clinical teams.

My scholarly work has extended the impact of these clinical and educational initiatives through curriculum development, educational research, peer-reviewed publications, local and national presentations, and dissemination of implementation strategies that support broader adoption of the PCBH model.

Across these efforts, as described in a 2023 Advance at UNM article on this work, I have sought to demonstrate the value of comprehensive, integrated behavioral health care as a practical and cost-effective approach to improving patient outcomes and access to care, particularly for underserved populations. Throughout my career, my goal has been not only to practice integrated behavioral health, but also to build the clinical, educational, and operational infrastructure that enables others to do the same. By developing sustainable models of care, training future clinicians, mentoring interdisciplinary teams, serving in health system leadership, and disseminating effective implementation strategies, I have worked to advance the PCBH model in ways that extend the impact of my clinical practice and align closely with CFHA’s mission of promoting comprehensive, accessible, and cost-effective integrated healthcare.

Nominator: Maria Juarez

I want to nominate Dr. Tara Budinger as a early pioneer of PCBH in our community here in Sonoma County, California. Tara has dedicated the past years of her career learning, educating and implementing PCBH into primary care at Santa Rosa Community Health, FQHC. She understands the needs of the underserved community we serve (primarily Hispanic, Latinx – monolingual Spanish speaking) to the degree that she learned to speak Spanish while working here to be able to speak in the patient’s preferred language and eliminate this barrier to provide direct care.

Tara has a passion, vision and drive for integrated behavioral health in primary care as she understands that this is the way to increase the most access to patients in communities like ours and further support primary care teams. I personally made the decision to step down from my behavioral health role at another FQHC to be able to learn this model and help Tara develop a training program that would emphasize the primary care behavioral health model. She has been a critical expert in this community to be able to not only teach me and others, but directly impact many patients through her direct work.

I will never forget watching the Beachy and Bauman WHO video where we both shared our nerdiness and passion to serve community with dignity and respect, but with a healthy level of competition as we both care deeply and want to be available as much as we can to support when we can.

Tara is a pioneer in our local community and her vision for a local training program inspires me and hope we can contribute in some ways to the incredible work that is being done. She wants to be able to transpire enthusiasm, hope and drive through the manual we are creating so that future behavioral health consultants can have a roadmap and enjoy the journey of serving as generalist in a primary care behavioral health model.

Nominator: Megan Sogn
It is a privilege to nominate Dr. Toni Mahowald for the Outstanding Contribution to the PCBH Model Award. Over more than a decade of dedicated service within CentraCare, Dr. Mahowald has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to advancing integrated behavioral health and exemplifies the principles of the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model through clinical excellence, leadership, education, and innovation.

Dr. Mahowald has spent over ten years serving patients in a specialty clinic within the Heart and Cardiovascular Center, where she has consistently provided high-quality, patient-centered behavioral health care within a fast-paced medical environment. Her ability to seamlessly integrate behavioral health services into specialty care settings reflects both her clinical expertise and her deep understanding of the PCBH model’s emphasis on accessibility, collaboration, and whole-person care.

Beyond her clinical work, Dr. Mahowald has made extraordinary contributions to training and workforce development—an essential pillar of sustaining and growing the PCBH model. She has been a longstanding and dedicated supervisor to trainees on the Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH) team, providing mentorship that is both rigorous and supportive. Her investment in learners extends across the CentraCare system, where she has actively served on committees focused on enhancing training opportunities for graduate-level students. Through her efforts, she has helped expand access to meaningful, high-quality learning experiences for emerging behavioral health professionals.

Dr. Mahowald’s leadership in program development has been especially impactful. She has played a key role in shaping structured learning opportunities for IBH trainees, including the creation of a comprehensive curriculum featuring bi-weekly didactics led by IBH team members. These sessions equip learners with practical skills in diagnosis and evidence-based interventions that are specifically tailored to the PCBH model. In addition, she has established monthly didactics featuring system experts on a wide range of relevant topics, ensuring that learners receive well-rounded and current training.

Her advocacy for learners is both strategic and compassionate. Dr. Mahowald actively seeks out free educational opportunities to reduce barriers to learning and is committed to the development of stipends to support trainees during their internships, demonstrating a deep understanding of the financial and structural challenges faced by students. She has also fostered strong partnerships with local universities, strengthening recruitment pipelines and ensuring the continued growth of a well-trained behavioral health workforce.

Dr. Mahowald’s contributions extend to system-level leadership and professional collaboration. She is an active member of the IBH team’s Core Competency Committee, where she helps guide the use of competency assessments to continually improve provider practice. Her engagement at the national level includes serving as co-chair of the CFHA SIM Specialty Workgroup, where she contributes to advancing training innovations within integrated care.

Through her clinical work, mentorship, program development, and leadership, Dr. Mahowald embodies the spirit of the PCBH model. Her efforts have not only enhanced patient care but have also strengthened the infrastructure and future of integrated behavioral health within CentraCare and beyond.

For her sustained excellence, visionary leadership, and profound impact on both patients and learners, I strongly and enthusiastically recommend Dr. Toni Mahowald for the Outstanding Contribution to the PCBH Model Award.

Nominator: Stacy Ogbeide

Nominator: Monique McKenny
Nemours Children’s Health: From Seed to Canopy

Collaborative Family Healthcare Association, Pediatric Integrated Care Award

Nemours Children’s Health’s Integrated Primary Care team is pleased to nominate our organization for the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association’s Pediatric Integrated Care Award. In 2002, our program began as a single seed, a partnership between a psychologist and a pediatrician who decided to grow something together. Since then, that seedling has set down roots in training, added rings in research, and cast new seeds across the field, all to place mental healthcare within reach for youth and families.

Nemours is among the nation’s largest integrated pediatric health systems, serving more than 250,000 children each year. Across the Delaware Valley, there are more than twelve primary care practices in urban, suburban, and rural communities, many of them in medically underserved areas. It was in this soil that Nemours first began embedding pediatric psychologists within primary care offices. Today, behavioral health providers are integrated into the care teams of twelve Delaware practices and 1 Pennsylvania practice, providing team-based behavioral health services that reach families where they already receive care. More than 30% of all children in Delaware are served by this model. The team has grown from 1 psychologist to 12 psychologists and 2 LCSWs.

Clinicians provide evaluation and brief, evidence-based intervention, addressing developmental, behavioral, and emotional concerns ranging from anxiety and depression to sleep, feeding, pain, school functioning, and treatment adherence. Along with curbside consultation, provider education, and universal screening, at-risk children are identified early and connected directly to a behavioral health provider within their medical home. Every Nemours primary care practice in Delaware holds National Committee for Quality Assurance designation as a patient-centered medical home, formal recognition of the coordinated, family-centered care that integrated behavioral health helps make possible.

Part of family centered care includes providing evidence-based approaches to address relevant needs. For example, our team has incorporated programs such as The Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) program, an evidence-based parenting intervention designed to strengthen caregiver-child relationships and promote healthy social, emotional, and biological development in young children (Dozier et al., 2014). At Nemours, providers have been trained to deliver ABC within the primary care setting, expanding access to specialized parenting support for families within their medical home.

Adding Rings: Growing the Research Base

Each year has added a ring of scholarship. Nemours has strengthened the evidence base for IPC through research that spans training (Hoffses et al., 2016, 2017), chart review (Hatchimonji et al., 2022), pain management in primary care (Salamon & Cullinan, 2019), billing and funding (Lines et al., 2012), conceptual models (Hoff et al., 2020), and review of the Nemours program (Lines, 2022) and the broader field of pediatric integrated primary care (Hughes-Reid, 2019; Lines, 2019; Lines et al., 2020). Additionally, Nemours IPC team continues to be active in research as evidenced through their partnership with Northwestern University on Peds-BRITE. Peds-BRITE (Pediatricians Building Resilience through Early Identification for Toddler Well-Being) is a clinical trial that seeks to identify toddler mental health concerns and connect families to timely, evidence-based intervention. Peds-BRITE demonstrates our effort to advance preventive behavioral health care within pediatric primary care settings.

Deepening Roots: Training the Next Generation

Nemours’ deepest roots are in the workforce it has grown. Nemours IPC services started with psychology learners, and training continues to be our deepest legacy. Since the early 2000s, Nemours has operated an active psychology training program offering IPC training to psychology externs, interns, and fellows, medical residents and fellows, and social work interns and pre-licensed therapist fellows, supported by continuous grant funding from Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Graduate Psychology Education Program and Behavioral Health Workforce Education Training grants since 2002. Since that time, 190 predoctoral interns have trained within Nemours IPC and over 40 postdoctoral fellows. In 2014, Nemours launched a specialized pre-doctoral internship track in Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH) to provide comprehensive training in pediatric integrated primary care as well as a specialized social work internship in 2016. Nemours IPC program graduates have taken the Nemours model and disseminated it to health systems nationwide, including Geisinger Health System, Children’s National Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Boston Children’s Hospital, Wellstar Health System, Lurie Children’s Hospital, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, MetroHealth, and others. Additionally, we conceptualize training as ongoing and cross-disciplinary as illustrated with Project ECHO. Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a collaborative telementoring effort that connects specialty experts with frontline healthcare providers to expand knowledge, workforce capacity, and access to evidence-based care. At Nemours, IPC providers serve as faculty and leaders in ECHO programs focused on training pediatrician colleagues on autism evaluation in primary care.

Spreading Seeds: Convening the Field

Nemours founded and continues to host the DREAM IPC Conference (Developing and REsearching Advanced Models of Integrated Primary Care), a national conference dedicated specifically to pediatric integrated primary care. Established in 2017 and convened biennially in Wilmington, Delaware, DREAM IPC has grown across five iterations into the field’s principal gathering point, where behavioral health providers, physicians, nurses, researchers, and trainees share innovative practice and emerging research. Through plenaries, peer-reviewed symposia, workshops, and dedicated training and career programming, it has become the branch under which the field gathers.

Taken together, Nemours’ record reflects each domain named in the award’s criteria: the development and dissemination of research and education through DREAM IPC; the promotion of innovative approaches through one of the country’s longest-running delivery models; ongoing critical self-reflection and commitment to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion through sustained service to underserved communities; and ongoing mentoring and advocacy through the clinicians trained.

For these reasons, Nemours Children’s Health is excited to submit for consideration of CFHA’s Pediatric Integrated Care Award. What began as a single seedling more than twenty years ago has become a canopy, wide enough for trainees, researchers, and families to gather beneath. With gratitude to the clinicians who have tended it, we strive to keep offering shade to our youth, our families, and the next generation of pediatric integrated care practitioners.

Nominator: Yun Boylston
Dear Members of the CFHA Awards Committee,

It is our honor to submit Burlington Pediatrics/Mebane Pediatrics for the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association’s Pediatric Integrated Care Award. As an independent, physician-owned pediatric practice serving more than 17,000 children across rural and suburban North Carolina, we believe our experience demonstrates that integrated behavioral health is not simply an enhancement to pediatric care—it is an essential component of the modern pediatric medical home.

Our work is grounded in the realities facing children and families in Alamance County. The 2024 Alamance County Community Health Assessment identified mental health as one of the county’s highest health priorities, with residents consistently citing depression, anxiety, substance use, suicide, and the shortage of behavioral health professionals among the community’s most pressing concerns. Families also identified transportation barriers, financial hardship, long wait times, and limited access to pediatric specialists as major obstacles to receiving timely care. These challenges are compounded by the social conditions in which many children live. According to the NC Child County Data Dashboard, approximately one in five children in Alamance County lives in poverty, while more than 40% of public school students are economically disadvantaged. Together, these realities underscore the need for integrated, accessible, and equitable models of pediatric care that address both medical and behavioral health needs where children already receive their healthcare.

Rather than viewing these realities as limitations, our organization viewed them as an opportunity to redesign pediatric care.

Today, Burlington Pediatrics/Mebane Pediatrics has developed a fully integrated pediatric medical home that intentionally combines behavioral health, primary care, nutrition, care management, lactation support, school-based services, and community partnerships into one coordinated system centered on children and families. Importantly, this transformation has been accomplished within an independent community pediatric practice, demonstrating that evidence-based integrated care is not limited to large academic medical centers or integrated health systems. We believe our experience provides a replicable model for pediatric practices across the country seeking to improve access, outcomes, equity, and sustainability.

Our integrated behavioral health program reflects a blended model of care that combines both the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) and Pediatric Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH). Behavioral health clinicians work alongside pediatricians, nurse practitioners, care managers, nurses, and registered dietitians as members of one interdisciplinary team rather than functioning as external consultants. Families can receive same-day behavioral health consultation, brief evidence-based interventions, ongoing psychotherapy when clinically indicated, psychiatric consultation through the the CoCM program in partnership with the North Carolina Psychiatry Access Line (NC-PAL), as well as longitudinal care coordination without leaving their trusted medical home.

Recognizing that children’s health extends well beyond behavioral health alone, we intentionally expanded integration across multiple disciplines. Our embedded registered dietitian provides medical nutrition therapy for obesity, feeding disorders, gastrointestinal conditions, and diabetes prevention. Integrated care managers support children with chronic disease, developmental disabilities, behavioral health conditions, and complex health-related social needs through longitudinal care coordination and support to access services and resources. Lactation consultants provide early support for infant feeding, maternal mental health, and healthy attachment. Together, these services function as one collaborative team rather than isolated programs, allowing families to receive comprehensive care in one familiar setting.

Innovation has remained central to our mission. Through partnerships with the Alamance-Burlington School System and community organizations, we have expanded the pediatric medical home beyond clinic walls through school-based telehealth services, improving access for children who might otherwise experience transportation barriers, missed school, or delays in receiving care. We have leveraged standardized behavioral health screening, digital health technologies, population health registries, and value-based care infrastructure to proactively identify children with emerging needs while continuously measuring quality and outcomes.

Our commitment to pediatric integrated care extends beyond clinical service delivery to workforce development and dissemination. Every physician and advanced practice provider in our organization has completed the REACH Institute Mini-Fellowship, strengthening pediatric behavioral health expertise throughout our primary care workforce. Our multidisciplinary team participates in continuous quality improvement, evidence-based practice implementation, and collaborative learning to ensure high-quality integrated care. We have shared our work through presentations, quality improvement initiatives, and national conferences, including presentations through the CFHA, with the goal of helping other independent practices implement similar models.

Health equity is not a lofty catch phrase—it is embedded throughout the design of our care model. We routinely evaluate screening completion, referral success, treatment engagement, access, and quality measures through an equity lens while adapting workflows to address disparities related to insurance status, language, race, ethnicity, and health-related social needs. By integrating behavioral health, nutrition, care management, and social support directly into primary care, we reduce barriers that historically prevent children and families from accessing specialty services.

Perhaps our greatest contribution has been demonstrating that independent pediatric practices can successfully lead transformation in integrated behavioral health. Too often, integrated care is viewed as feasible only within large health systems with significant financial and academic resources. Our experience challenges that assumption. Through thoughtful practice redesign, interdisciplinary collaboration, value-based partnerships, and an unwavering commitment to evidence-based medicine, we have built a model that improves access, advances health equity, strengthens the pediatric workforce, and remains financially sustainable.

The families we serve rarely distinguish between physical health, behavioral health, nutrition, or social needs. They simply want one trusted team that knows their child, understands their family, and works together to help them thrive. That philosophy has guided every aspect of our integrated care journey.

The CFHA Pediatric Integrated Care Award recognizes organizations that improve the health of children and adolescents through innovation, education, equity, advocacy, and collaboration. Burlington Pediatrics/Mebane Pediatrics is honored to embody those principles every day. We are proud to demonstrate that comprehensive pediatric integrated care can flourish within an independent community practice, improving outcomes for children while serving as a model for pediatric practices nationwide. We believe the future of pediatric healthcare lies in integrated, evidence-based, team-based care—and we are honored to contribute to that future.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

The Team at Burlington Pediatrics / Mebane Pediatrics

Nominator: Matthew Hoag
To my colleagues and partners in CFHA,

I am honored to nominate the Denver Health Integrated Behavioral Health Pediatric Primary Care and School-Based Health Center Teams for the Pediatric Integrated Care Award.

This team has built and sustained one of Denver Health’s most mature pediatric integrated behavioral health programs and is now expanding that model into school-based care. Their work reflects the best of pediatric integrated care: holistic, team-based, equitable, prevention-oriented, and grounded in the belief that behavioral health belongs wherever children, youth, and families already receive trusted care.

For more than 13 years, Denver Health’s pediatric primary care teams have developed integrated behavioral health programming that has become essential to how we care for children and families. This work is demonstrated through our HealthySteps program and our broader pediatric primary care IBH model. In 2025 alone, HealthySteps provided 3,425 visits for 2,070 unique patients. Across IBH pediatric primary care more broadly, the team provided 13,005 visits for 7,260 unique patients age 18 and younger.

These numbers reflect more than volume. They demonstrate a sustained, embedded model of care in which behavioral health and child development expertise are part of pediatric practice. Through HealthySteps, families with children ages 0–3 receive developmental, behavioral, relational, and caregiver support as part of routine well-child care rather than through a separate or delayed referral pathway. The model includes screening for child development, caregiver depression, and social determinants of health; brief intervention and consultation; tiered support based on family need; and ongoing behavioral health involvement for families enrolled in HealthySteps.

This approach allows pediatric teams to identify needs earlier, support caregivers more directly, and respond to developmental and relational concerns before they become more acute. It also reinforces the reality that pediatric behavioral health is not only about treating symptoms. It is about supporting healthy development, caregiver-child relationships, family resilience, and lifelong wellbeing.

Dr. Larissa Miller has been central to sustaining and expanding this work. As Manager of Pediatrics, Infant Mental Health, and OB/GYN, she has helped maintain fidelity to the HealthySteps model while also operationalizing it within the realities of a large safety-net health system. She has used state grant opportunities to strengthen and grow services, supported process improvement efforts, and helped expand HealthySteps to Sloan’s Lake Clinic. Her leadership has ensured that this work is not simply aspirational. It is embedded into workflows, documentation, training, team communication, and day-to-day pediatric care.

What makes this contribution especially meaningful is that Denver Health’s pediatric integrated care work is no longer viewed as optional or supplemental. Since developing these services, it is difficult to imagine returning to a model where behavioral health is separate from pediatric primary care. Integrated behavioral health has changed how our pediatric providers understand and respond to family need. It has created a clinical environment where emotional, developmental, relational, and social concerns are treated as part of whole-child care. For our providers, it has become part of the fabric of pediatric practice.

This year, that long-standing pediatric primary care foundation is informing a major transformation in Denver Health’s School-Based Health Centers. Our SBHC behavioral health and psychiatry teams have provided behavioral health services in school-based settings for many years, reaching 20,730 visits for 2,028 unique patients in 2025. That level of need demonstrates both the importance of the existing SBHC behavioral health model and the opportunity to reach students earlier through a more integrated approach.

In 2026, the SBHC team began intentionally moving toward an integrated behavioral health model, applying Primary Care Behavioral Health principles to the realities of school-based care. The problem this work seeks to address is urgent and familiar: too many students do not access behavioral health support until their needs have escalated. As a safety-net system serving Denver Public Schools, Denver Health’s SBHCs offer a “no wrong door” approach for students who may otherwise struggle to access services due to transportation, insurance, stigma, language, family stressors, or fragmented care systems. The goal is to reach students earlier, normalize behavioral health as part of whole-person care, and create more immediate pathways for support before crisis becomes the entry point.

This summer, Danielle Vice, Director of SBHC Behavioral Health, partnered closely with Dr. Larissa Miller to bring several SBHC behavioral health clinicians into pediatric primary care IBH clinics. These clinicians practiced within established IBH settings to learn integrated care principles, observe team-based workflows, and prepare to help launch the SBHC IBH model in August 2026.

Danielle Vice has led this change with transparency and steadiness. She has guided her managers and teams through a significant model shift while honoring the behavioral health work already occurring in SBHCs. Her leadership has helped frame the transition not as a rejection of prior work, but as an evolution toward earlier access, stronger team integration, and a more consistent care model for students.

Dr. Ladegard, SBHC Psychiatrist, has helped educate teams about the unmet behavioral health needs of students and the importance of increasing access, screening, and integrated supports. His perspective has helped the team understand that many students who need behavioral health support may never reach a traditional behavioral health clinician unless the system is designed to identify and support them earlier.

Dr. Sandra Cherabie, Medical Director of SBHC, has served as a critical bridge and champion with SBHC medical providers. Her leadership has reinforced that this transformation is not only a behavioral health initiative. It is a change in how the entire SBHC clinical team understands and delivers care.

Together, these teams are building an integrated pediatric behavioral health continuum across Denver Health’s hospital and community system. From infancy and early childhood in pediatric primary care to adolescence in school-based health centers, they are designing care around where children and families already are. Their work advances equity by reducing barriers to access, strengthens quality by embedding behavioral health into trusted care teams, and promotes innovation by adapting evidence-informed integrated care principles across distinct pediatric settings.

This nomination recognizes more than a program. It recognizes a sustained clinical commitment to children, youth, families, and teams. The Denver Health IBH Pediatric Primary Care and School-Based Health Center Teams have demonstrated what pediatric integrated care can look like when it is built with persistence, humility, and a deep commitment to serving families who need care to be accessible, coordinated, and whole.

Nominator: Daniel Robb

Nominator: Michael Kelley
It is with great admiration that I nominate Dr. Dana Gadaire for this award to recognize her commitment and innovative contributions to pediatric integrated behavioral health care. Dr. Gadaire is a rare leader whose work transforms systems while simultaneously uplifting the people within them. Since joining the faculty at Michigan Medicine, she has promoted interdisciplinary collaboration to reshape how our pediatric practices understand and deliver behavioral health support. She leads with a commitment to delivering compassionate care to meet the unique needs of all patients and their families. She is also a resourceful innovator who recognizes the strengths of interdisciplinary teams and individual team members, promoting efficiency and provider retention in our health system.

Dr. Gadaire has trained countless clinicians, from medical residents to graduate level psychology trainees, to incorporate behavioral health principles into everyday pediatric practice. She has a gift for making complex concepts accessible and actionable, investing deeply in supporting trainees, early career clinicians, and colleagues across disciplines. As the co-director of the post-doctoral fellowship program in Pediatric Psychology, she has built bridges for trainees within a complex health system to promote their attainment of personal and professional goals. Dr. Gadaire has also led the development of our integrated care model to better align with local needs. She developed an innovative partnership with our local school system to promote early identification and community-based mentorship opportunities for youth in our community. She also spearheaded a comprehensive needs assessment to better align pediatric behavioral health services with the priorities and patients and primary care providers.

Dr. Gadaire consistently advocates for care models that address disparities and promote inclusion. Whether training staff or collaborating with community partners, Dr. Gadaire ensures that the voices of marginalized families are centered. She routinely assesses and incorporates patient value systems into treatment protocols that are empirically sound, flexible, and ecologically valid.

Finally, Dr. Gadaire engages in continuous innovation to promote dissemination of patient-centered behavioral healthcare. She has written multiple grants and presented at various conferences related to disparities in early recognition of Autism, differential referral and diagnosis of ADHD in underserved populations, and inclusion of fathers and nontraditional caregivers in their children’s behavioral healthcare.

Dr. Gadaire’s contributions are substantial, sustained, and deeply aligned with the values of this award. I strongly recommend her for this recognition.

Nominator: Sydney Crane
It is my privilege to nominate Dr. Nicole Piland for the Pediatric Integrated Behavioral Health Award. Dr. Piland represents the highest standard of leadership, innovation, mentorship, and advocacy within pediatric integrated behavioral health care. Her work has been defined by a commitment to creating sustainable systems that ensure children and families receive compassionate, equitable, whole-person care during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

Dr. Piland’s contributions extend far beyond clinical service delivery; she has been a visionary leader in developing and expanding pediatric integrated behavioral health programs that have fundamentally changed access to care for youth and families. Through her leadership, she has built the foundation for embedding behavioral health services across pediatric specialty care settings including pediatric endocrinology, complex medical trauma, pediatric trauma and burn services, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), hematology/oncology, and additional specialty populations impacted by acute and chronic medical conditions.

Recognizing that medical complexity impacts not only the child but the entire family system, Dr. Piland has championed an integrated model of care that addresses emotional well-being, adjustment, trauma, caregiver distress, adherence challenges, and the relational impact of illness. She has been instrumental in demonstrating the value of behavioral health providers as essential members of interdisciplinary medical teams, helping shift the culture of pediatric healthcare toward a more holistic, collaborative, and family-centered approach.

A hallmark of Dr. Piland’s work has been her ability to transform ideas into sustainable programs. Through her dedication to grant development, community partnerships, and interdisciplinary collaboration, she has secured funding opportunities that expanded behavioral health access and strengthened the integration of mental health services within pediatric healthcare systems. These initiatives have allowed programs to grow beyond traditional outpatient models and reach families directly within the medical environments where support is needed most.

Dr. Piland’s leadership has also resulted in the establishment of numerous meaningful collaborations among medical providers, behavioral health clinicians, researchers, trainees, community partners, and healthcare organizations. Her ability to build bridges across disciplines has created a foundation for integrated care models that continue to expand and influence the future of pediatric healthcare. Through these partnerships, she has elevated the role of behavioral health providers and demonstrated the importance of collaborative, team-based approaches in improving patient and family outcomes.

In addition to her programmatic achievements, Dr. Piland has made outstanding contributions to education, supervision, and mentorship. She has dedicated her career to training future generations of marriage and family therapists and behavioral health professionals to enter medical settings with the confidence, skills, and systemic lens necessary to provide high-quality integrated care. Her mentorship extends beyond clinical competency. She teaches providers how to advocate for their role, collaborate effectively with medical teams, and remain grounded in compassion and humanity while supporting families facing extraordinary circumstances.

Dr. Piland’s commitment to advancing pediatric integrated behavioral health is further reflected through her scholarly contributions, research involvement, and dedication to disseminating knowledge that strengthens the field. Her work continues to expand awareness of the unique value behavioral health professionals bring to pediatric healthcare and contributes to the ongoing evolution of integrated care practice.

Perhaps most remarkable is that Dr. Piland’s impact is not limited to any single program, clinic, or institution. Her influence exists in the systems she has transformed, the families who have received care because of her advocacy, the clinicians she has mentored, and the collaborative pathways she has created for future innovation. She leads with humility, vision, and an unwavering belief that every child and family deserves care that recognizes the full complexity of their experience.

Dr. Nicole Piland exemplifies the very mission of this award. She has advanced pediatric behavioral health through innovation, expanded access through sustainable program development, promoted equity through family-centered care, and invested deeply in mentoring the next generation of integrated care leaders. Her work has not only improved pediatric healthcare, it has helped redefine what comprehensive pediatric care should look like.

For these reasons, I can think of no individual more deserving of recognition for outstanding contributions to pediatric integrated behavioral health care than Dr. Nicole Piland.

Thank you for your consideration of her for this award.

Nominator: Patrick Luizzo
Jill Donelan, PsyD. has dedicated her entire career to integrated behavioral health for children and adolescents. Before joining Mirah, she served as a clinical supervisor and psychologist in the Child Partial Hospital Program at Baystate, where she cared for some of the most vulnerable adolescent patients in a higher acuity setting. She championed setting SI risk protocols throughout the entire hospital, and helped develop an early childhood program Build Resilience in Young Children (BRYC) at Baystate. The program supported families of children from birth to 5 years old who experienced stressful, scary, or traumatic life events that may be impacting their social / emotional development. That clinical foundation shapes everything she does today, and it gives her a rare understanding of what integrated pediatric care actually requires to be successful and sustainable.

At Mirah, Jill leads the clinical implementation team and drives complex CoCM implementations across many settings, with a particular focus on pediatrics. She works hand in hand with teams to design workflows, measurement protocols, care pathways, and security protocols built around the realities of caring for kids and families. Her approach is holistic and practical: she makes sure the systems supporting youth behavioral health are sound, that care is measured and monitored, and that programs are positioned to last. By helping organizations stand up sustainable pediatric collaborative care, she is expanding access to high-quality integrated care for young people who too often go without it (when they often need it the most).

Jill has also helped advance the field beyond any single organization. She co-authored the Pediatric Collaborative Care Pathway with respected contributors from Concert, Meadows, and AIMS, contributing to the education and dissemination of innovative, evidence-based approaches to pediatric integrated care. For her clinical depth, her commitment to children’s behavioral health, and her work to make integrated pediatric care both excellent and enduring, I am proud to nominate Jill Donelan for the Pediatric Integrated Care Award.

Nominator: Bridget Beachy