NJAMHAA 75th Anniversary

14 75 th Anniversary Joe Masciandaro Joe Masciandaro joined NJAMHAA in 1978 soon after he began working at CarePlus NJ, then called Mid-Bergen Community Mental Health Center. In fact, he eagerly took on the challenge of leading the practically bankrupt center. He built it into a corporation comprising of four separate entities: the core nonprofit that provides treatment, a foundation that supports community education, a workforce skills development program and a therapeutic day school. “Joe never shied away from adversity. Instead, he embraced every opportunity to make a profound impact on individuals’ lives through his early years as a clinician and later as an advocate, agency executive and board member for NJAMHAA and other mental health-focused organizations,” Dr. Wentz said. Masciandaro served on the NJAMHAA Board from 1980 to 2014, including multiple terms as Chair, and he also served as the NJMHI Board Chair for several years. Throughout his 50+ years of service, Masciandaro held a variety of leadership positions in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, state hospital operations and community mental health care, and established effective partnerships that have benefited NJAMHAA’s Pioneers (continued) NJAMHAA persuaded the Department of Human Services (DHS) to implement contract reform, including elimination of clusters and allowing providers to retain a portion of accruals and excess revenues, as well as more flexibility to move funds without submitting budget modifications. NJAMHAA persuaded DHS to implement an Operational Incentives policy that allowed providers to retain 100% of their current contracts’ net savings and use them for capital improvement projects, one-time staff bonuses or vehicle replacements. In addition, NJAMHAA advised the DHS Commissioner to expand this pilot program to all DHS divisions and the divisions of the Department of Children and Families (DCF). Also that year, evidence of NJAMHAA’s dedicated efforts to benefit individuals included the association’s success in convincing legislators to change language in the New Jersey Advance Directives for Mental Health Care Act to prevent individuals who were clinically determined to be unable to make sound decisions for their wellbeing from suspending their advance directives after they became operative. In addition, NJAMHAA defeated the Social Work Exemption for Non-Profits, which would have eliminated the exemption granted to nonprofit community mental health agencies that allowed them to employ individuals without social work licensure to work under supervision to serve clients. FY2005 FY2006 Following are many more examples of NJAMHAA’s impactful advocacy — in addition to preservation of and increases to funding in state budgets — from 2005 to the present: State 1967 The AMA adopted the position that alcoholism is a complex disease. The earliest example of artificial intelligence (AI) used to strengthen individuals’ mental health was ELIZA, a chatbot that simulated a psychotherapist through text- based interactions. It proved the potential for technology imitations of conversation and the foundation for future AI applications in behavioral health care. 1966