Ethical Practice in Behavioral Health
Wednesday, October 15 | 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Topics covered in this skill-building workshop include: principles which guide ethical decision making in treatment and prevention; diagnosis and ethics; avoiding the iatrogenic effect; strength based ethical practice; “unfinished business” and ethical dilemmas; the ethical use of evidence-based practices; the ethics of boundaries, physical touch, self-disclosure and verbal communication; ending helping relationships in an ethical manner; striving for self-actualization as an ethical principle.
Objectives
- Use principles to guide ethical decision making in treatment and prevention.
- Work with clients from a strength-based perspective.
- Use ethical principles when making diagnoses.
- Use ethical principles to establish healthy boundaries with clients.
- Examine evidence-based practices from an ethical lens.
- Explore ethics as it pertains to verbal communication with clients.
About the Trainer
Jennifer Hodgson, PhD, LMFT, Principal, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who maintained a private practice and taught in higher education for 24 years prior to joining HMA. The scope of her experience in higher education training environments includes medical education, resident training, and fellowship programs (i.e., family medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry), as well as family therapy and medical family therapy master’s and doctoral programs. She co-developed the first Medical Family Therapy doctoral program in the nation and served as major professor to 21 doctoral students during her tenure at East Carolina University.
During her tenure in higher education, she developed a strong skillset in helping training programs prepare for, apply, and maintain their professional accreditation and certifications. She has expertise designing, innovating, and delivering integrated care in primary, secondary, and tertiary care contexts.
One of Dr. Hodgson’s longest consulting contracts (17 years) was focused on developing policies and workflows for sustaining an integrated care model for a multi-clinic federally qualified health center (FQHC) with a large Latino population. This includes the implementation of several evidence-based practices for a wide range of mental health and substance use disorders among youth and adults. Additional consulting work includes helping programs apply for and maintain accreditation, designing curriculums for medical and mental health providers around workforce retention, delivering training on effective leadership and supervision approaches, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, and integrating behavioral health in primary (e.g., FQHC, training, and private), secondary, and tertiary care contexts.
Dr. Hodgson helped healthcare and school-based systems strategically plan and launch integrated behavioral healthcare programs, as well as hospital-based systems in thinking about family engagement through patient portals using proxy access. A strength of her work includes knowing how to partner with higher educational institutions to develop a pipeline of future medical and behavioral health professionals who will work in these contexts upon graduation.
Her skillset in designing and implementing programs includes leading needs assessments and providing technical assistance to ensure quality and fidelity are maintained. This expertise includes her ability to train and develop quality metrics at the clinical, operational, financial, and educational levels, and conduct research to study lived experiences, outcomes, and inform program and service delivery improvements.
Dr. Hodgson co-wrote and co-edited textbooks, book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, and other non-peer-reviewed works focused on growing and training the behavioral health workforce and integrated care delivery systems. She secured millions of dollars in grant funding at local and federal levels to help support her areas of work. In October 2022, she was awarded the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association’s “Family Oriented Care Award” for her commitment to ensuring our healthcare system is responsive to the needs of individuals and families.
Dr. Hodgson earned her doctor of philosophy degree in human development and family studies from Iowa State University. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in medical family therapy from the University of Rochester. She earned her master’s degree in applied family and child studies from Northern Illinois University and her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Akron.