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Our Mission
The Office of Mental Health Promotion in the Department of Psychiatry contributes to measurable improvements in community mental health and well-being by fostering diverse community, consumer and collegial partnerships to build upon their collective strengths in education, service and research towards reducing mental illness risk factors, developing protective factors, enhancing determinants of mental well-being and improving access to care.
Our Goal
Respond to shared community priorities by informing, advising, connecting resources, initiating programs and broadening the science and practice for collaborative action and culturally congruent education, clinical service and research.
What We Do
- Community Counts is a faculty forum to support academic partnerships with communities and social institutions.
- Provide Community Education and Psychoeducation at health fairs and other community gatherings.
- Community Partnership Development Award promotes new collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that aim to improve the mental health of community populations through research, education or service-based efforts co-led by community members and faculty.
- Staff the Consumer Advisory Council of Strong Behavioral Health.
- Diversity Training integrates awareness of our community’s history and diversity to increase the cultural sensitivity, knowledge base and skills of our mental health providers.
- Health Care Internship site for the STEP Program provides high school students with an academic and career development opportunity to stimulate and maintain interest in medicine, health care and technological professions.
- Raising 100,000 Voices is a community education project where young adults learn videography and produce a short video on the strengths and challenges of emerging into adulthood.
- Spring Institute on Community-Partnered Suicide Prevention Research is a training institute to foster community-integrated and community-led research programs that focus on the prevention of suicide, attempted suicide, and risk factors such as youth violence, drug use, family turmoil, intimate partner violence, psychological and personal distress, and adverse life experiences. This institute is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Ann Marie White, Ed.D., Assistant Professor, is the Director of the Office of Mental Health Promotion. She has been with the department since 2004. She came after spending two years as a Science Policy Fellow of the Society for Research in Child Development, in the U.S. Senate and in the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research in the Office of the Director of the NIH. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University in 2002. A central theme in Dr. White’s efforts in mental health promotion is to develop the research approaches, professional training and institutional climates that help close the gap between research, community, policy and public health practice around behavioral health issues affecting children, adolescents, young adults and young families.
Caroline Nestro, MS, RN, CS, is the Associate Director of the Office of Mental Health Promotion and a Senior Clinical Nurse Specialist for Psychiatric Nursing. Her nursing career began in 1980 when she worked in medical, surgical and intensive care settings. She has been with the Department of Psychiatry since 1984 and has worked in various clinical settings. She has been the recipient of the Excellence in Clinical Care Award, the Excellence in Psychiatric Nursing Award and has received a Distinguished Community Service Award from East House Corporation for her work with the chronically and persistently mentally ill. She is a member of the International Society for Psychiatric Mental Health Nurses. She has worked in a leadership capacity since 1998 and was instrumental in facilitating the creation of the Department of Psychiatry Consumer Advisory Council in 2006. She chairs the Department’s Diversity and Cultural Competence Leadership Team and actively facilitates community partnerships to promote mental health.
Susan Diesel has been with the Department of Psychiatry since 1999. In 2001 she received the “Friend of Residents” award. She has been the Executive Director of the Genesee Valley Psychiatric Association since 2002. She was promoted to Administrative Assistant in The Office of Mental Health Promotion in 2004 and now works as Residency Coordinator in the General Residency Program as well as being the Liaison between Psychiatry Education and The Office of Mental Health Promotion.
Linda Viney has been with the Department of Psychiatry since 2002. She provided support for the Psychiatric Consultation & Liaison Service for six years before coming to The Office of Mental Health Promotion. Prior to her work in the Department of Psychiatry, Linda worked in finance at Eastman Kodak Company. She is active in her church and in her community as a Hilton Apple Festival board member.
Funding Announcements from the Office of Mental Health Promotion:
2008 Innovations on Community Scholarship Award
The purpose of this award is to support the development, maintenance or evaluation of community-university partnerships and collaborations in mental health that do one of the following: conduct or facilitate community- or place-based research, prevention, intervention, education or dissemination of research findings into practice or policy. These are generally one-time awards, limited to one per faculty member per year, for new or ongoing projects that require funds to reach new partners or to create new collaborations.
To apply, send – as an electronic attachment only – not more than a one-page document to Yeates Conwell MD, Ann Marie White EdD, and Linda Viney. Click here for more information about the award and how to apply.
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