We've tried to design a program that will allow us both to share information about the Center and to get your input regarding our strategies for its development. Perhaps our biggest challenge is to forge an independent identity for the Center and a sense of commitment by the faculty to its goals. We hope to do this by developing an intellectual community that will be responsive to the needs of the Center's multiple constituencies and a research program that will contribute both to the New York public mental health system and to our general knowledge of the principles of system design. The Center was officially funded at the end of September 1993. Since then, many of its research projects have begun and the Executive Committee has met monthly to articulate its mission and operating structure.
Today is our first opportunity to discuss our progress.
We very much look forward to your participation in this process and your evaluation of our plans for creating the Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health. The Center's Executive Committee recently appointed several individuals to the Center's faculty. Appointed to the Executive Committee of the Center, where she will serve as co-director of the Special Populations Core, was Ethel Davis Jackson, RN, MS, associate commissioner of adult services for the New York State Office of Mental Health. Among the new faculty members, Dr. Aponte, Dr. Grantham, Ms. Redd, and Dr. Suarez are all members of the New York State Office of Mental Health's Multicultural Advisory Committee. Dr. Hatfield resigns from National Advisory Board Agnes Hatfield, PhD, professor emeritus in the Department of Human Development at the University of Maryland and a founding member and first president of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, recently resigned from her position as a member of the Center's National Advisory Board.