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Workforce Wellness: Building Connections! The Importance of Mentorship in Primary Prevention
June 12 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Enhancing the Behavioral Health Workforce: Prevention Pathways Community of Practice
Overview:
ABHPC hosts monthly online Prevention Pathways Community of Practice. These interactive sessions will provide participants with an opportunity to learn, build skills for successful prevention efforts, and network with other prevention professionals. Discussions will be centered around best practices in prevention, emerging and empirical research, and evidence-based programs. Each session will be led by an experienced consultant with expert knowledge on the topic and will include ample time for participant engagement and interaction.
June Topic
Workforce Wellness: Building Connections! The Importance of Mentorship in Primary Prevention
Learning to center the voices of the populations and communities we support is crucial to effective prevention. You may have heard the phrase “nothing about us without us” – but how do we ensure that our priority populations are leaders and stay at the front and center of our efforts, and their needs are embedded in each step of our prevention work? The Community of Practice: Elevating Community Voices series aims to address these questions with a variety of populations.
California has the highest population of military personnel in the United States and is home to about 1.8 million veterans. Experiences of military-related stress and trauma are risk factors for substance use and misuse – which makes Service Members, Veterans, and their Families (SMVF) a priority population for prevention. This interactive session will teach participants about military culture and methods of engaging SMVF in prevention including how to develop SMVF-specific prevention programs. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own professional and personal experiences and learn from the expertise of our subject matter expert and one another.
About the Presenter
Olivia Shrago, (she/her) M.S.W., provides management oversight for the ABHPC program with a focus on Prevention Pathways, which aims to develop and retain the prevention workforce. Olivia received her Master’s in Social Work from the University at Buffalo in New York, where she began her prevention work on the university’s sexual violence prevention team. Since then, Olivia has worked with government-funded suicide and mental health prevention programs across a variety of settings, including middle and high schools, the United States Air Force, and Black churches. Olivia has experience with project management, training design and implementation, and supporting prevention research.
Brittney Sampson (she/her) is a Substance Use Disorder Certified Counselor. She works with At-risk youth, foster youth, and youth on probation and in the Butte County Juvenile hall. Brittney is the program coordinator for the statewide Youth Peer Mentor Program. She is certified Mindfulness-Based Substance Abuse Treatment (MBSAT) facilitator and currently facilitates YPMP groups with the MBSAT curriculum for youth in Shasta, Glenn, and Butte Counties and is also a Peer Mentor at YPMP Natural High Retreats. Brittney also works for the Butte County Public Defender Ronald A. Reed, a Juvenile Defense Lawyer, and is currently the Legal Secretary for Butte County’s Public Defender’s consortium Project Upstream.
Amanda Montgomery (she/her) is a highly experienced professional with a strong track record of over 20 years in community and system change. She received the NASADAD National Award for Innovative Substance Abuse and Mental Health Prevention Programs, Practices, and Policies. The award recognized her exceptional contribution to co-authoring three youth-driven prevention programs and school-based curricula. Applying Risk and Protective factor theory and research, she designs prevention and early intervention models and curricula that demonstrate organizational change and student impact.
Amanda’s expertise spans various fields, including higher education, early childhood mental health services, substance use disorder prevention, K-12 schools, and child abuse and neglect prevention efforts. In her most recent work in higher education, Amanda focuses on system change to bridge equity gaps and bring California’s Community College’s Vision for Success into reality through the Guided Pathways framework. Her unwavering dedication to improving economic mobility and addressing social drivers of education highlights her passion for ensuring equitable opportunities and success for all.
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