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The 22nd NIMH Conference on Mental Health Services Research

Science Update

The 22nd National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Conference on Mental Health Services Research (MHSR): Research in Pursuit of a Learning Mental Health Care System, will be convened on April 23–25, 2014, at the Natcher Conference Center on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Campus, Bethesda, MD.

The MHSR Conference is organized biennially by the NIMH’s Services Research and Clinical Epidemiology Branch to promote areas of high priority for services research and to identify opportunities with potential for significant impact on the health and well-being of people with mental disorders. Recent and ongoing changes in and concerns about our health care delivery system make the time ripe for evidence on how to structure and guide the mental health service system of the future. In particular, the recent National Academy of Sciences report Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America offers a useful framework toward managing increasing complexity in health systems and improving health outcomes—the learning health care system. Applying these concepts to mental health care forms the nexus of an agenda for NIMH services research in the coming years and provide the basis for the MHSR 2014 agenda:

  • System integration of mental health care that provides coordinated services across a wide range of institutions, agencies, and social service systems (e.g., specialty care and adult and pediatric primary care clinics and the education (pre-K through college), welfare, and criminal and juvenile justice systems)
  • Technology-supported data collection and services delivery to provide access to underserved populations in formats that meet patient preferences
  • I ncorporation of data needed for observational and prospective research studies as well as ongoing quality improvement within practice settings
  • Investigation of local innovations within service systems and promotion of the crowdsourcing of system improvement
  • A ssessment and impact of state and local policies on access to and value of mental health care
  • Prevention and preemption of medical comorbidities among people with mental disorders

If you are interested in attending, please register .