Advocating for Whole-Person & Whole-Community Health
Foundation for Health Leadership & Innovation
Building leadership, shaping practice, affecting policy, and driving innovation through collaborative partnerships.
On May 7, 2024, FHLI hosted our?annual legislative breakfast?at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Three of our programs co-hosted the event: the North Carolina Rural Health Association (NCRHA), the North Carolina Oral Health Collaborative (NCOHC), and the Center of Excellence for Integrated Care (COE). Our teams championed multiple legislative priorities, including:
We look forward to advocating for these policies alongside our statewide partners in the coming year!?
In this edition of the Health Equity Digest, you can learn more about our legislative breakfast, the COE team’s Mental Health Well Visit policy priority, the benefits of care integration, and more.
Legislative Breakfast Speakers Amplify Policy Priorities for Rural Communities
During the breakfast, we heard from Representative Tim Reeder, MD, Chris Shank of the North Carolina Community Health Center Association (NCCHCA), Dr. Frank Courts of the NC Dental Society Council on Prevention and Oral Health, and Senator Gale Adcock, MSN.
Representative Reeder, an emergency physician from Pitt County, spoke about whole-person health care, emphasizing the connection between the head, the mouth, and the body. Shank spoke about her work at NCCHCA and the important role NCRHA serves in advocating for rural communities across North Carolina.
Dr. Courts and Senator Adcock spoke about their participation in a recent North Carolina Institute of Medicine task force on oral health. The task force focused on recommendations for transforming the oral health system to increase access to and equity in care. It released a?full report on April 24, 2024, including a robust slate of recommendations, several of which have policy implications.
Insurance Coverage of Mental Health Well Visits for Children and Adolescents?
May was Mental Health Awareness Month, and there is an ongoing need to raise awareness about and increase access to and equity in mental health care. Dr. Lisa Tyndall, PhD, LMFT, COE Interim Director, presented a new Mental Health Well Visit policy priority at our legislative breakfast. The proposal is to give children ages zero to 17 the option of receiving a free annual mental health well visit from a practitioner with mental health training through their insurance with their caregiver’s consent.
Studies show that youth mental health challenges increase the likelihood of adult mental health conditions. According to a North Carolina study, children with psychiatric challenges were three times more likely to experience mental health or other socio-economic problems as adults. In our health care system, mental health insurance coverage is usually tied to a mental health diagnosis made after symptoms have been identified.
Insurance coverage for a mental health well-child exam would equip children, adolescents, and families with tools and coping skills that would help prevent the development of symptoms and diagnoses while destigmatizing speaking with a mental health professional.
Though mental health screeners are currently part of well-child exams, covering this service would allow providers to have more in-depth preventive conversations about mental health. Prevention is vital in every other area of our health. If you would like to learn more, you can contact Dr. Lisa Tyndall, PhD, LMFT.
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Therapeutic Support for Mental & Overall Health
Working with a therapist is one way for children, teenagers, and adults to get mental health support. Research shows that a healthy, positive client-therapist relationship is essential for success, and finding the right therapeutic fit can take time. Like searching for a place to live, most people shop around before finding a provider who suits their needs.
In addition to considering a provider’s style, personality, and therapeutic approach, looking for cultural alignment, shared identities, and personal experiences can also be helpful. This overlap can enhance feelings of validation and understanding.
For many people, however, the lack of racial diversity in the mental health workforce can pose challenges to accessing affirming and culturally attuned care. Below are some resources for Black, Indigenous, and people of color:
In this How to Find a Therapist blog post, you can continue learning about different types of mental health care providers, insurance coverage, and more.
Care Integration to Improve Health Outcomes??
“I came from a primary care setting, and I was working in integrated care with patients. I thought to myself, ‘This is whole-person care,’ but I wasn’t asking patients about their oral health. As social workers, we talk a lot about how people need to realize that the brain is part of the body. But we’re just as guilty of leaving out the mouth.” —Jamie Burgess-Flowers, MSW, LCSW
Like mental health, oral health is also often siloed. Yet, both are vital and inextricably connected to overall health. The mind-body connection is complex, and deficiencies in any area can impact well-being. Research indicates that up to 80 percent of a person’s overall health can be attributed to non-medical factors, also known as social drivers of health (SDOH).
A few examples include structural racism, housing stability, education quality, and transportation availability. These conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age contribute to health disparities and inequities and can create barriers to care for North Carolinians.
Through interprofessional provider coordination, integrated care better supports each person’s unique, interconnected needs, including SDOH. This approach has been shown to improve outcomes while benefiting patients and providers. Although behavioral health and social work integration are becoming more common in primary care, they remain far less common in oral health.
The UNC School of Social Work and Adams School of Dentistry are working to change this. They partnered to develop a model for integrating dental and social work education. Students from both cohorts gain invaluable experiences through workforce development and learning opportunities related to SDOH.
Jamie Burgess-Flowers, MSW, LCSW,?Kelsey Yokovich, MSW, and?Lisa de Saxe Zerden, MSW, PhD published a research paper titled “The social determinants of health, social work, and dental patients: a case study” to document the implementation of this model at the dental school. You can find out what they had to say about their experiences and vision for integrated care in oral health settings in NCOHC’s latest blog post,?Oral Health Care Integration Case Study Part I: Social Work in Dentistry.?
Learn More About Our Programs & Support Our Work
Thank you for tuning into this edition of the Health Equity Digest! Explore our website to learn more about FHLI and our programmatic work. You can also donate today to support our mission to advance collaborative, equity-centered, and community-driven solutions to improve the overall health and well-being of all North Carolinians.