Here are the four enduring projects of the Mental Health Association of Portland.
Law & Mental Health Conference
The 2021 Law & Mental Health Conference was July 19 & 20 – on the Impact of Alcohol on State and Local Governments
The Law & Mental Health Conference brings together expert speakers with legal, clinical, and lived experience to discuss the conflict between law and mental illness.
Keynote by Author & Historian Susan Cheever
Susan Cheever
Susan Cheever is the author of many books on American History, including Drinking in America: Our Secret History and My Name is Bill – Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. She teaches at Bennington College and The New School in their MFA programs. She is in open recovery.
Drinking in America: Our Secret History
Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation’s history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson–His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous
In this definitive and groundbreaking biography, Cheever offers a remarkably human portrait of a man whose life and work both influenced and saved the lives of millions of people. Drawing from personal letters, diaries, AA archives, interviews — and Cheever’s own experiences with alcoholism — My Name Is Bill is the first fully documented, deeply felt account of Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Keynote by David Jernigan, PhD
David Jernigan, PhD
Professor – Boston University School of Public Health Department of Health Law, Policy & Management
Dr. Jernigan is best known for his action-research approach to the issue of alcohol advertising, marketing, and promotion and its influence on young people. His work has led to better advertising regulations and a clearer understanding of the evolving structure of the alcohol industry. His work is policy relevant and scientifically rigorous.
Dr. Jernigan has been very active in translating research findings into policy and practice. He testifies regularly at city, state, and national levels around alcohol advertising and youth, alcohol availability, and taxation. He also trains advocates around the world using the best evidence.
Other scheduled session speakers include –
- Joel Ainsworth – ECONorthwest
- Linda Chezem, JD – Purdue University
- Paul Gilbert, PhD, ScM – U of Iowa, APHA Alcohol, Tobacco & Other Drugs Section Chair
- Cassandra Greisen Tourre – National Alcohol Beverage Control Association
- Tiffany Hall – Alaska Recovers
- Bruce Livingston – Alcohol Justice
- Mike Marshall – Oregon Recovers
- Nandita Murukutla, PhD – Vital Strategies
- Tim Naimi, MD, MPH – University of Victoria, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research
- Mike Tobias – Michigan Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking
The Law & Mental Health Conference is designed for attorneys and law enforcement, public and private clinicians; public healthcare and hospital administrators, social workers, policy designers and legislators, and organizations and individuals involved with the care and welfare of people with mental illness, addiction, and alcoholism.
Public Housing Conference
The Public Housing Conference was virtual and online during the month of December 2020, tightly focused on Homelessness and COVID with five municipal case studies – Phoenix, Las Vegas, Portland, Los Angeles. The 2020 conference is CLOSED. All CEU certifications will be distributed by January 2, 2021.
The Public Housing Conference is an interdisciplinary and intersectional gathering of property owners and housing developers, lawmakers and public administrators, public health clinicians, law enforcement and community leaders, tenants and neighbors to discuss the ongoing housing crisis. The goal of the conference is to educate the community and increase opportunities for public housing, with a special interest in housing for people in recovery from mental illness and addiction.
Mental Health Alliance
Organizations and individuals who represent the interests of people with mental illness and have long participated in efforts to reduce police use of force used against people with mental illness joined together as a friend of the court in US DOJ v. City of Portland.
Organizational members of the Alliance include Portland Interfaith Clergy Resistance, Disability Rights Oregon, the Mental Health Association of Portland, and the Oregon Justice Resource Center.
Supporters of the Mental Health Alliance meet regularly to hear from invited guests, discuss the organization’s advocacy and legal agenda, and prepare testimony for city, county, state, and Federal venues. To attend a meeting, send a message to info@mentalhealthportland.org.
Washington Recovery Services
Washington Recovery Services provides solutions to homelessness in Washington State.
The organization works closely with Oxford House and is actively seeking to purchase and convert private homes for people leaving homeless and gaining self-sufficiency through mutual support, employment, and recovery from alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness.