No, there will not be a Dr. Lonnie E. Mitchell National Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Conference this year. However, this year SAMHSA will host its second Dr. Lonnie E. Mitchell HBCU Behavioral Health Policy Academy.

Policy Academies should be viewed as a catalyst for change. A Policy Academy is a model workshop designed to help a select number of groups develop and implement their own large-scale initiatives to address a common public policy issue. The groups that generally attend policy academies are States. The 2010 Behavioral Health Policy Academy is distinctive because it is one of, if not the first, university-based Policy Academies. The Academy will bring together university administrators, students, and faculty with leading national experts to coordinate university-specific responses to behavioral-health-related public policy issues.

Seventeen schools, which will make up 17 teams, will be selected to participate in the Academy. By investing significant time, energy, and resources in a limited number of schools, Academy participants will be better able to:

• Narrow the priorities they are seeking to address;
• Define outcomes that will move those priorities forward;
• Formulate a sustainable plan to achieve those outcomes; and
• Implement and measure the impact of their plan. Efforts are underway to establish means for distance viewing for those schools not selected for onsite participation.

Each university is establishing its own team of influential policymakers composed of a university administrator, key faculty and staff, and student leaders. This Policy Academy requires a significant commitment from the participating universities. It should be emphasized that an Academy is a process, not an event, and that it generally occurs in three stages:

Stage 1: SAMHSA and the HBCU–Center for Excellence (HBCU–CFE) will work with individual HBCUs to facilitate discussion and help lay the groundwork for their university-specific policy initiatives.

Stage 2: Academy teams are brought together at least once for a formal Policy Academy. Here, they incorporate into their respective action plans feedback from nationally recognized experts and lessons learned from their peers at other schools.

Stage 3: Having completed (or nearly completed) their action plans at the Academy, teams return home to implement those plans. SAMHSA and HBCU– CFE staff monitor university progress and provide technical assistance as needed.

Attendance at the 2010 Policy Academy is based solely on your school’s application for and award of an HBCU–CFE Substance Abuse Treatment Workforce Development or Mental Health Mini-Grant. The list of mini-grantees is accessible at http://www.hbcucfe.net/grants.html.

The Dr. Lonnie E. Mitchell HBCU Behavioral Health Policy Academy will be held March 14-17, 2010, at the Buena Vista Palace Hotel in Orlando, FL.

If you have a question about the Policy Academy, please e-mail Sandra Thompson at sthompson@westover.com. If you have a question regarding the HBCU–CFE Mini-Grants, please call the HBCU–CFE at 1-866-988-HBCU (4228).