Organizations band together to help people of color get vaccinated in Utica and Rome
Mohawk Valley COVID Community Navigator Program kicks off to help more people of color get vaccinated in Utica and Rome.
Posted: Jun 9, 2021 5:03 PM
Updated: Jun 9, 2021 6:24 PM
Posted By: Gary Liberatore
Utica, N.Y.. - Several local organizations are banding together to help get more people of color vaccinated in Utica and Rome.
The effort is being called the Mohawk Valley COVID Community Navigator Program.
Various navigators from numerous agencies will be going out into the two cities in the coming weeks to try to get more people of color vaccinated.
Donald Hume
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Donald Hume is a Peer Specialist who lives in New Mexico. He has a long experience in the field of recovery. He is one of the leading experts in this field nationally. His contribution has had a major impact in the creation and development of a network of Peer Specialists who are integral part of the New Mexico healthcare system.
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Peer support specialists are individuals who have had experience with emotional distress, trauma, or other emotional challenges and have been trained to assist others experiencing emotional distress. Peers’ interventions improve self-esteem and confidence, the ability to bring about changes, and the feeling that treatment is addressing the real needs of individuals.
In the past few years, peer support specialists have been officially recognized as essential figures by Medicaid, managed care organizations, and other public health institutions for the delivery of integrated and coordinated behavioral health services.
Mary Burckell, Director, Safe Haven
Mary Burckell has a diverse and extensive background in education, governmental relations and project management. Mary’s work on the Safe Haven Project, the Parish-owned continuum of care behavioral health campus, culminated in her most recent role as Director of Safe Haven. Mary has a passion to improve behavioral health treatment and she hopes to lead the Safe Haven campus into a new phase while staying true to Safe Haven’s vision.
Nick Richard, Executive Director, NAMI St. Tammany
Nick Richard has been Executive Director of NAMI St. Tammany since December 2008. During his tenure, he has built strong community relationships between law enforcement, mental health care providers and community leaders. He has served as a mentor during both the formation of 22nd JDC Behavioral Health Court and the creation of the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) for the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office. He is currently the co-chair for his community on
Remembering Jennifer Kinzie (1979-2021)
Editor’s note: Michael Gilbert contributed to this remembrance of Jennifer Kinzie, who died on February 22.
Jennifer Kinzie was a woman full of hope. I say that delicately, reverently, and, even in the light of her recent death, I say it as defiantly as Ms. Kinzie might say it herself, were she able to do so.
But alas, she is not. Jennifer Lynn Kinzie passed away suddenly last week in Virginia.
Streetwise and sincere, Kinzie was a licensed mental health counselor who truly was a person of lived experience. She was diagnosed as “bipolar” as a teenager, and like so many from her generation, she was medicated. After suffering the debilitating effects of diagnosis and drugs, Jennifer used this personal experience in order to guide her work not only as a counselor and therapist, but also as a volunteer with numerous psychiatric survivor groups.