About CMHA • CMHAM - Community Mental Health Association of Michigan
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About CMHA

Community Mental Health Association of Michigan

The Community Mental Health Association of Michigan (CMHA) is the state association representing and advocating for Michigan’s public mental health system and those served by this system. That system and the CMHA members include: the state’s public Community Mental Health (CMH) centers, the public specialty/behavioral health plans (Prepaid Inpatient Health Plans (PIHP) formed and governed by the state’s CMHs) and the private providers within the CMH and PIHP provider networks. Annually, the members of CMHA, numbering over 150 organizations from across the state of Michigan, serve over 300,000 Michiganders with mental illness, emotional disturbance, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and/or substance use disorders.

CMHA Statement of Non-Discrimination

CMHA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. CMHA celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, partners, and those whom CMHA serves.

CMHA does not discriminate in employment nor in the provision of services on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.

CMHA mission

The Community Mental Health Association of Michigan supports its membership by informing, educating, and advocating for mental health, emotional disturbance, intellectual and developmental disability, and substance use disorder services by strengthening collaboration with persons served, community, partners, and government. The full CMHA strategic plan can be found by clicking HERE.

 

Value of CMHA to its members: CMHA accomplishments in 2022

The dues and fees that the members of the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan provide a number of important benefits to the Association’s members. Those benefits fall within the five strategy platforms of the CMH Association. Examples of these benefits provided in 2022 are outlined HERE.

 

CMHA strategic platforms

  • Strategic Platform: Education and training
  • Strategic Platform: Government relations/advocacy
  • Strategic Platform: Policy and data analysis
  • Strategic Platform: Linking with information, resources, partnerships; representation of members interests in a range of policy making settings
  • Strategic Platform: Media and public relations

 

Overarching themes reflected in the Strategic Initiatives in all Strategic Platforms

The following themes will be reflected in the strategic initiatives across all four Strategic Platforms. To avoid highlighting them, repeatedly, within each of the strategic initiatives listed below, they are described here.  Note that because of the potential and significant impact of the opportunities and challenges outlined above, these themes form the bulk of the core around which the Strategic Initiatives are designed.

1. Ensuring the strength and vibrancy of Michigan’s publicly sponsored mental health system including its two core roles:

Local public policy, safety net, and community convener – roles those that must be fulfilled by the local/regional public sector if the public interest is to be served in both the short and long term. These roles include:

    • governance of the local/regional venue in which fiscal control of public funds, and the reinvestment of earned income into the system (purse strings) and policy setting are carried out
    • Statutory role in fulfilling the local public policy setting body – as the community’s mental health safety net
    • Convener and partner with a wide range of other community organizations aimed at collectively addressing a wide range of healthcare and social needs
    • Commitment to population health across the full community

Management of highly organized, well-developed service delivery networks – recognizing that Michigan’s local/regional mental health public sector is unique, in design and structure, to meet the community-based health and human services of those whom it serves

    • Management of a comprehensive network of community-based traditional and non-traditional services and supports
    • Active engagement at first contact and throughout treatment and services/supports, in the home, workplaces, schools, mental health centers, primary care centers
    • Use of a whole person orientation addressing social determinants as a core part of service delivery approach
    • Statutory role as the local service delivery system manager – as the community’s mental health safety net

 

2. Fostering a wide range of healthcare transformation initiatives centered around continued and accelerated innovation. Those initiatives would include:

  • healthcare integration (supported by the longstanding work of the Association and its members in this area, its partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson’s Delta Center)
  • movement toward value-based payments (supported by the Association’s partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson’s Delta Center)
  • evidence-based practices (supported by the longstanding work of the Association, its members, and MDHHS in this area and via the Association’s partnership with the Great Lakes Mental Health Technology Transfer Center and SAMHSA)
  • the centrality of social determinants of health and whole-person care
  • local, regional, state-level, and national partnerships
  • health equity – what is often called the fifth component of the quintuple aim (working to eliminate or close health disparities – the greater existence and impact of social determinants on low income persons, persons of color, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized persons)

 

3. Pursuit of the quintuple aim:

  • enhancing the quality of healthcare and the experience of the person served
  • improving population health
  • controlling cost
  • improving the work-life of providers (including recruitment and retention of the behavioral health workforce)
  • fostering health equity

 

4. Recognition of the potential impact, diversity, rapid development, and complexity of the healthcare transformation initiatives and related changes in statute, regulation, financing, practices, and leadership taking place in Michigan and across the country demand that the Association and its members:

  • have a current and deep understanding of a great many developments within the healthcare field
  • are involved in shaping local/regional, state, and national policy and practice
  • are able to develop a range of strategic partnerships

 

5. Recognition of the inherent dignity of persons with mental health, substance use disorder, and intellectual/developmental disability needs and the value of those who serve and support them – their friends, families, and staff.

 

6. Fostering the expression of a diversity of views and interests while integrating those views into a unified vision and voice – recognizing the vital importance of creating and sustaining a unified vision and voice

 

Opportunities and challenges faced by CMHA in its work to assist its members to meet the opportunities and challenges that they face

 

1. The opportunities and challenges faced by the Association are driven by its work to assist its members to meet the opportunities and challenges faced by them, as listed above.

 

2. The diversity of the membership of the Association and the Association’s constituency and allies, beyond its members, provides both opportunities and challenges. The dimensions of diversity include:

    • the role of the member/constituent: CMHSP, PIHP, provider, affiliate (non-provider) member, persons served, family member, advocate, community partner, elected official
    • the community of interest to the member/constituent: rural, urban, suburban; race; ethnicity; language; gender; and other communities of interest
    • the mental health need of interest to the member/constituent: the needs of persons with mental illnesses, emotional disturbances, intellectual/developmental disabilities, and/or substance use disorders
    • the clinical or technical discipline of the member/constituent
    • the political view of the member/constituent

The opportunities and challenges related to this diversity include:

    • fostering the expression of a diversity of views and interests while integrating those views into a unified vision and voice – recognizing the vital importance of creating and sustaining a unified vision and voice
    • identifying the diverse needs of those members and addressing them with tailored approaches while seeing the common denominators and themes across those needs

 

3. The fast changing healthcare landscape, across all dimensions (clinical, fiscal, structural, statutory, regulatory, partnership and collaborative development, technology, and human resources, to name a few) requires that the Association be able to ensure that it keeps the Association and its members aware of, educated on, and its skills honed relative to these developments.

 

4. Given that the developments in which the Association and its members are involved or will be impacted take place at local, regional, state, and national levels, the opportunity and challenge is to strategically determine the appropriate level of involvement by the Association. These levels include, among others:

  • depth of involvement ranging from a central actor in the identification and resolution of an issue to that of only an observer
  • roles including advocate, researcher, convener, leader, coalition member, calming agent, agitating agent
  • level of government at which Association action should be focused: national, state, regional, local

 

5. The state and national political environment requires a deep understanding of legislative, executive, and judiciary branch issues, decisions, and processes as well as a diverse and sophisticated set of tools in order to pursue an advocacy agenda – such as the agenda that is needed to represent the interests and meet the needs of the Association’s members. Ensuring that the Association has such a diversity and sophistication of advocacy tools provides a challenge and opportunity for the Association.

 

6. The significance, diversity, and complexity of the opportunities and challenges faced by the Association’s members demand that the Association and its members: have a current and deep understanding of a great many components and developments within the healthcare field, are involved in helping to shape state and national policy and practice; and a range of strategic partnerships.

(517) 374.6848

507 S. Grand Avenue, Lansing, MI  48933

 

 

CMHA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. CMHA celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, partners, and those whom CMHA serves. CMHA does not discriminate in employment nor in the provision of services on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, parental status, or other non-merit factor.

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