Changing the Conversation Blog | C4 Innovates

Laura Winn

Laura Pannella Winn is an applied social scientist interested in health care policy and its intersection with substance use, mental health, and homeless services. As an Associate at the Center for Social Innovation, she has led the implementation of many related federally funded research and training grants. She currently serves as the Deputy Project Director of Project Amp, an intervention research project aimed at preventing substance use disorders in adolescents though a brief mentorship with young adults in recovery. Laura received her master’s in social sciences from the University of Chicago. She lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband and two children. Her work is informed by a family history of addiction.

Addiction Prevention: Reading Between the Lines of My Father’s Loss

Some things that happen in our lives have such a profound impact that you can see their tentacles reaching into every avenue of your life. For me, I can see how living poor as an adolescent, losing my mother to cancer, and meeting my husband at an early age has impacted how I approach the world today.

Then other things happen, and while you know they are significant, you can’t trace their impact. You are at a loss on how to interpret the pain and the grief, so you put it aside and move on. I lost my dad to addiction when I was 21 years old.

More Room for Debate: Homes for the Homeless

On Thursday of last week, the New York Times printed the following statement on their opinion page, Room for Debate, entitled Homes for the Homeless:

Waiting for Care – Implications of Health Care Reform

I’ve been working under our SAMHSA contract Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS) to organize an annual Policy Academy to help state systems adopt a recovery orientation. Armed with a subcontract, states pull together teams of decision makers to effect a paradigm shift by bringing recovery-oriented care to their mental health and substance use services.

Hospital Readmission Penalties – Cutting Resources for Patients Who Need Them Most?

Over a year ago I worked with a research group that had secured NIH funding to better understand the 30-day readmission rates at minority-serving hospitals across the country. I interviewed Chief Quality Officers, Chief Medical Officers, case mangers, and others in public, private, and teaching hospitals with a high minority patient population.

Changing the Conversation