About Us
Our Mission
The Office of Mental Health Promotion in the Department of Psychiatry contributes to measurable improvements in community mental health and well-being by fostering diverse community, consumer and collegial partnerships to build upon their collective strengths in education, service and research towards reducing mental illness risk factors, developing protective factors, enhancing determinants of mental well-being and improving access to care.
Our Goal
Respond to shared community priorities by informing, advising, connecting resources, initiating programs and broadening the science and practice for collaborative action and culturally congruent education, clinical service and research.
What We Do
Academic-community partnership preparation
Community Counts is a year-round faculty forum to support academic partnerships with communities and social institutions. The Spring Institutes on Community-Partnered Suicide Prevention Research, fostered community-integrated research projects on the prevention of suicide, attempted suicide, and risk factors such as youth violence, drug use, family turmoil, intimate partner violence, psychological and personal distress, and adverse life experiences.
Provide Community Education and Psychoeducation at health fairs and other community gatherings.
Diversity Training integrates awareness of our community’s history and diversity to increase the cultural sensitivity, knowledge base and skills of our mental health providers
.
Develop community-based participatory research projects.
Staff the Consumer Advisory Council of Strong Behavioral Health to facilitate patient and family centered care within the Department of Psychiatry clinical services.
Raising 100,000 Voices is a community education project where emerging adults learn videography and produce a short video on the strengths and challenges of adulthood in partnership with WXXI and youth serving community agencies.
Provide trainee & staff education, academic, and career development support to stimulate and maintain interest in medicine, health care, technological professions, and public health.
Community Partnership Development Award promotes new collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that aim to improve the mental health of community populations through research, education or service-based efforts co-led by community members and faculty.
Bridge Art Gallery aims to provide a space for local artists to display their artwork while at the same time creating a lovely and therapeutic environment for the patients, families and employees of Strong Behavioral Health. The aim is to address stigma associated with mental health services.
Who We Are
Ann Marie White, Ed.D.,
Assistant Professor, is the Director of the Office of Mental Health Promotion. She has been with the department since 2004. She came after spending two years as a Science Policy Fellow of the Society for Research in Child Development, in the U.S. Senate and in the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research in the Office of the Director of the NIH. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University in 2002. A central theme in Dr. White’s efforts in mental health promotion is to develop the research approaches, professional training and institutional climates that help close the gap between research, community, policy and public health practice around behavioral health issues affecting children, adolescents, young adults and young families.
Caroline Nestro, MS, RN,
is the Associate Director of the Office of Mental Health Promotion and a Senior Clinical Nurse Specialist for Psychiatric Nursing. Her nursing career began in 1980 when she worked in medical, surgical and intensive care settings. She has been with the Department of Psychiatry since 1984 and has worked in various clinical settings. She has been the recipient of the Excellence in Clinical Care Award, the Excellence in Psychiatric Nursing Award and has received a Distinguished Community Service Award from East House Corporation for her work with the chronically and persistently mentally ill. She is a member of the International Society for Psychiatric Mental Health Nurses. She has worked in a leadership capacity since 1998 and was instrumental in facilitating the creation of the Department of Psychiatry Consumer Advisory Council in 2006. She chairs the Department’s Diversity and Cultural Competence Leadership Team and actively facilitates community partnerships to promote mental health.
Jessica Poweski, BBA,
is the Secretary IV and started in the Office of Mental Health Promotion in May 2011. She graduated with a Bachelors in Business Administration degree in Technology Management from Alfred State College while working in the President’s Office during her academic years. She also experienced social media and public relations during her internship in the marketing department at Alfred. She is a currently a masters student in the MS Marketing program at the U of R at the Simon School. She wants to further develop her skills to pursue a career in the marketing field in an educational or healthcare setting.
