Conference: DMHAS Innovations in Maternal Behavioral Healthcare: Mitigating Risk & Optimizing Wellness

Join the CT Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and The Connecticut Women’s Consortium for a day of networking and presentations on holistic behavioral health approaches to addressing the challenges of the maternal mortality and morbidity crises.

Breakfast and lunch will be provided at this event.

Please note that this event is for adults only.

Presentations to include:

Catharine McDonald, MS, NCC, LPC

Catharine McDonald is a National Certified Counselor, Connecticut Licensed Professional Counselor, and trained as a Family Life Educator, Fair Play Method Certified Facilitator and Baby-Led Sleep Educator currently working on a post-graduate certificate in Sex Therapy at The University of Michigan. She owns Growing Well Counseling in Tolland, CT where she specializes in integrative perinatal wellness, fertility and loss, birth trauma, postpartum sexual health, and parental work-life balance. She has spoken at state and national conferences and has created professional development training for therapists, birth professionals and reproductive healthcare providers on these topics, perinatal ethics and clinical documentation and more.

Lucinda Canty, PhD, CNM, FACNM, FAAN

Lucinda is a mother, nurse, midwife, researcher, nurse educator, historian, a reproductive health justice activist, artist, and poet, deeply committed to improving the maternal health of Black women and other women of color. She has 30 years of experience providing midwifery care and works in many lanes of nursing to address and improve health outcomes for women of color. Her experience as a clinician, researcher, and educator fuels her desire to address racism in nursing, midwifery, and the healthcare system. Lucinda's antiracism activism aims to create change in practice, education, research, and policy. She advocates for women of color to have the resources and support they need to maintain their health and wellness.

Dyanne Tappin, MD, MPH, FACOG

Dr. Tappin is an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Connecticut. She has practiced obstetrics and gynecology for a number of years and is excited to be back in the academic community where she can focus more on teaching, research, and community collaborations. Her professional interests include maternal mental health, trauma-informed care, public health, and health disparities.

Kenn Harris

Kenn is a national expert in the field of maternal and child health, public health, fatherhood/male involvement and community engagement. He is passionate about women’s health, children, fathers and families as well as the health and well-being of the communities in which they live, learn, play and pray. Currently an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow, he has previously served as vice president for engagement and community partnerships at the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality in Boston, MA, and as vice president for community engagement and director and principal investigator of the New Haven Healthy Start program at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. Kenn is a past president of the National Healthy Start Association and helped establish the Association’s Dads Matter Initiative: Where Dads Matter, Washington, DC. He is co-creator of the Core Adaptive Model for Fatherhood (CAM©), an evidenced-informed model for fatherhood/male involvement programs.

Please note that due to the nature of this conference, we cannot refund money after July 24th. 

More to come!