Report Back on Mental Health in Kansas City
As you may know, NCDD is involved in the Creating Community Solutions mental health project, and we hope you will take a moment to read a recent update that our partners at AmericaSpeaks shared on their blog.
On Saturday, September 21, the Creating Community Solutions effort of the National Dialogue on Mental Health hosted a successful all-day town meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. The meeting was part of the collaborative effort lead by the National Institute for Civil Discourse. It was organized and managed by a veteran of dialogue and deliberation, Jen Wilding, with the support of a small but dedicated team and a large and diverse planning committee.
The Mayors of both Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas opened and closed the event and spent the entire day participating. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius also helped open the event that generated lots of good news coverage:
Kansas City Start Article
Fox 4 News Video
Like the events before it in Sacramento and Albuquerque, the organizers successfully recruited a large and diverse audience of 360 participants with pretty good representation of the community along lines of age and race. And like previous meetings, higher educated people were over represented, but this is hard to overcome given the number of health professionals involved.
Click here for a full report on the meeting including data about the participants and the outcomes of all the table discussions.
It was a great pleasure to work with the team in Kansas City to help them produce an AmericaSpeaks 21st Century Town Meeting and support the on-going National Dialogue on Mental Health.
