Several months ago, we were joined by Chuck Ingoglia, the CEO and President of the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, for an excellent and informative conversation on the organization’s advocacy work. On this episode, we’re joined by Peter Delia, the Council’s Federal Policy and Advocacy Strategist. Peter was previously Senior Attorney for the FL Senate, and the Assistant Attorney General Florida Office of the Attorney General.

Peter discusses his journey from state government to the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. We delve into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its implications for Medicaid, mental health, and substance use disorder care. The conversation covers the council's advocacy efforts, including action alerts, member surveys, and webinars, aimed at addressing the challenges posed by the new legislation and the strategies being employed to mitigate their effects.

Lou Servizio is the founder/CEO of Wellcast ROI, the leading international provider of analytical tools that calculate the ROI of wellness, behavioral, pharmaceutical, and occupational health programs. One of the more fascinating people we’ve visited with - Lou is also an accomplished scuba diver and marathoner - we discuss his journey from international banking to healthcare informatics and how it led to the formation of Wellcast ROI.

We talk about the Workplace Outcome Suite (WOS), which was developed by Chestnut Health Systems (CHS), and emerged to become a standard for EAPs to measure the efficacy of their services in five key areas: work absenteeism, work presenteeism, work engagement, workplace distress, and life satisfaction. Lou shares plans to create a new, more modern instrument to align with the evolution of EAPs as they’ve expanded their services and products. Lou also discussed how it will incorporate AI, and how he and the CHS team are planning to make it a more “universal” tool that can be adapted beyond EAP/behavioral health to measure services and programs addressing physical health, and the increased ROI when they’re applied to both (based on “portfolio theory” - you’ll have to listen to the very end to understand how that works!).

A fascinating conversation with a fascinating guy.

Katherine (Kate) Elkington, PhD, is a Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University and a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Elkington also serves as the Director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Youth Justice, within the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She has over 15 years of research experience in criminal and juvenile legal settings, with expertise in documenting and understanding correlates of mental illness, substance use/disorders, and HIV risk behaviors in highly vulnerable youth.

In this episode, Kate discusses the complexities of the juvenile justice system, the importance of understanding the mental health needs of these youth, and the innovative E-Connect screening tools designed to link young people to behavioral health services. Kate also addresses the role of AI in mental health care and the future directions for E-Connect, emphasizing the need for better family involvement in treatment.