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A heartfelt thank you again to our keynote ALOK, all of our incredible speakers, and everyone who joined us for the 7th Annual Mental and Behavioral Health Conference on February 6th. Nearly 200 registrants came together — in person and virtually — for a powerful day centered on the theme “Supporting LGBTQ+ Mental & Behavioral Health in Times of Uncertainty: Healing Collective Trauma Through Belonging, Joy, and Resistance.“
ALOK’s keynote moved the room deeply, offering a reminder that joy is not frivolous — it is resistance. Breakout sessions led by practitioners, researchers, and our own MSU Denver faculty explored queer-affirming clinical practice, Black LGBTQIA+ experiences, moral injury, and systemic advocacy. In a political moment when LGBTQ+ communities face mounting threats, this conference became more than an educational event; it became a refuge and a community.
7th Annual Mental & Behavioral Health Conference
We are so grateful to everyone who showed up and helped create that space, and we hope to see you at our conference in 2027!
8th Annual Mental & Behavioral Health Conference
No Estamos Solos: Collective Healing for Latiné Communities
Friday, February 26, 2027 | 9:00AM – 3:30PM (MST)
Hybrid: MSU Denver & Zoom
The Mental & Behavioral Health Conference (MBHC) is a hybrid gathering for students, professionals and community partners exploring transformative approaches to mental and behavioral health. This year’s theme, No Estamos Solos: Collective Healing for Latiné Communities, celebrates the power of joy, culture and community to build resilience and collective well-being in Latiné communities, especially in this moment in history.
We’re honored to welcome keynote Julissa Soto, a longtime Denver advocate for Latino health equity whose work includes Domingos de Salud Mental (Sundays of Healing), a culturally rooted initiative creating spaces for connection, healing and empowerment. She’s is also the founder of the Charlas Initiative, a behavioral health initiative designed to expand culturally and linguistically responsive mental health access for Latino communities across Colorado. Her innovative community health work has earned her the 2024 Disruptor of the Year Award, and her approach exemplifies the power of culturally rooted, community-centered healing.
Registration Pricing
- $30 – Students
- Want to attend but can’t afford it? If you’re an MSU Denver student, please apply to the C2Hub Student Travel and Professional Development Funding here. If you are not an MSU Denver student and/or you’re unable to get funding through C2Hub, please fill out this MBHC student scholarship form!
- $85 – MSU Denver faculty & staff
- $120 – Community partners; faculty & staff of other institutions
Support Meaningful Impact in Mental & Behavioral Health
Your sponsorship directly supports high-quality, CEU-eligible professional development for those working at the frontlines of mental and behavioral health care. Together, we can foster belonging, resilience, and collective healing while equipping professionals with tools to better serve diverse communities.
Sponsorship Levels
Emerging Leader Sponsor — $250
- Recognition as an Emerging Leader Sponsor in the conference program
- Thank-you post on MSU Denver’s Department of Social Work social media (IG, FB & LI)
Education Sponsor — $500
- Recognition as an Education Sponsor in the conference program
- Thank-you post on MSU Denver’s Department of Social Work social media (IG, FB & LI)
- An exclusive Department of Social Work t-shirt for up to 5 staff members
Access Sponsor — $750
- Recognition as an Access Sponsor in the digital program
- Thank-you post on MSU Denver’s Department of Social Work social media (IG, FB, LI)
- An exclusive Department of Social Work t-shirt and Yeti mug for up to 2 staff members
- 2 Conference registrations
Mental Health Champion — $1,500
- Recognition as a Mental Health Champion in the digital program and website
- Verbal acknowledgement during opening & closing remarks
- Logo featured on the digital program and social media posts
- An exclusive Department of Social Work t-shirt and Yeti mug for up to 4 staff members
- 4 Conference registrations
2027 Conference Tracks
Sessions in this track centers direct practice with Latine individuals, families, and communities living with identity and immigration-related trauma, fear, and hypervigilance. Sessions explore how social workers and allied helpers can offer care that is trauma-informed, culturally grounded, and honest about the systems shaping clients’ lives right now. Proposals might explore:
- Trauma-informed and healing-centered care for Latine communities
- Working with chronic fear and hypervigilance in clients facing immigration enforcement
- Culturally grounded interventions that foster belonging and resilience
- Supporting mixed-status families through uncertainty and separation
- Safety planning and crisis response when a family member is detained
This track focuses on the larger systems that shape Latine families’ well-being. Sessions explore immigration policy, pushing back against systemic racism, know-your-rights work, organizing, and advocacy, and how social workers, community leaders, and affected communities build power to protect one another. Proposals might explore:
- Know-your-rights trainings for clients, schools, and workplaces
- Organizing against immigration detention in your city or county
- Using state and local policy to protect immigrant families
- Rapid response networks: building and sustaining community protection
- Showing up and speaking out: public comment and testimony
- Sustaining advocacy through long fights and setbacks
This track honors the healing that already lives in Latine communities. Sessions explore community-based and culturally grounded practice, including promotoras, mutual aid, storytelling, art, spirituality, and tradition as sources of healing, and why these practices belong at the center of mental health care. Proposals might explore:
- Promotoras and community health workers as trusted healers
- Mutual aid as mental health care: lessons from community networks
- Testimonio and storytelling circles as collective healing
- Art, music, and movement as resistance and restoration
- Faith, spirituality, and ancestral traditions as sources of strength
- Using joy and cultural pride as resistance
Those doing this work are carrying fear, grief, and exhaustion of their own. This track explores vicarious trauma and burnout under current administration policies and enforcement, with self-care framed as a professional responsibility and as collective care, not an individual fix. Proposals might explore:
- Vicarious trauma and moral distress when systems limit what you can offer
- Sustaining yourself while serving communities under threat
- Building a culture of care and accountability in teams and agencies
- Supporting providers who share identities and fears with the people they serve
- Boundaries, rest, and collective care for advocates
- Somatic and community-based practices for burnout
2027 MBHC Proposal Submission
- Deadline for Proposals: Monday, January 11, 2027 at 11:59 PM (MT)
- Notification of Acceptance: Week of January 18, 2027
Want to do more to support this conference?
Past Events
Date & Time: Friday, February 6, 2026, 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Location (Hybrid): Zoom & MSU Denver CAVEA Theater & Jordan Student Success Building (JSSB) 4th Floor
Welcome Remarks & Thank You to Sponsors
Concurrent Workshops – Session 1
The Queer Adjusted Systemic Lens: Advancing Justice and Affirmation in Relational Practice | August Tousignant-Stanton (they/them), LCSW, LMFT
Advocating for Policies and Systems that Support LGBTQ+ Inclusive and Accessible Sexual Health | Hal Lersch (they/them) & Megan R. Westmore (she/her), PhD, LMSW
Beyond the Therapy Room: Queer Leadership in Building Inclusive Mental Health Systems for LGBTQ+ Survivors of Trafficking and Exploitation | Chelsea Newton (she/her), LCSW, M.Ed. & Liz Downey (she/her), LCSW
Virtual Keynote with ALOK
45 minute conversation with Alok Vaid-Menon, moderated by Bleu Vargas (she/they), Assistant Director of the LGBTQ Student Resource Center on Auraria Campus, followed by a 15 minute pre-submitted Q&A session.
Lunch Break
Concurrent Workshops – Session 2
Embracing Multiplicity: Black LGBTQIA+ Sense of Belonging Experiences | Olivia Hunte (she/they), MSW
Meaning, Scope, and Scale – Resisting the Intrapersonal Impacts of Moral Injury and Fascism for Therapists | Janelle Peters (they/them), LCSW
Concurrent Workshops – Session 3
The Cost of Caring: Navigating Secondary Trauma and Emotional Exhaustion | Allison Johanson (she/her), LCSW
Authenticity as Ongoing Practice: Supporting Clients in Gender Exploration | Kai Dunn (they/them), LCSW, LAC
From Silence to Sound: Integrative Healing for Trauma, Addiction, and Queer Resilience | Alanna Bell (she/her), MA, LPC, CCH, AChT
Closing Session & Networking
Date: Friday, February 7, 2025
Time: 9:00AM – 2:00PM MST
Location: Zoom Webinar 2025 MBHC CONFERENCE
Welcome Address (presentation)
Dr. Dawn Matera Bassett, MSW, LCSW, PhD., Grants Director at MSU Denver
Breakout Sessions 1
Bridging the Gap: Merging Indigenous Wisdom and Contemporary Perinatal Care | Tonya Myles-Day, DSW, LMSW, University at Buffalo, School of Social Work (presentation)
Self Disclosure: A Clinical Elder’s Perspective on its Power for Healing and Power for Wounding | Judith Kay Nelson, MSW, Ph.D. (presentation)
Feature Presentation
RMTAC: Refugee & Migrant Technical Assistance Center for Behavioral Health | Luz Chapa, M.Ed, LPC & Esther Rodriguez, M.S., Clinical Consultant
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION with JaLisa Williams MSW, LCSW
Breakout Sessions 2
Navigating Oppression and Adversity: Resilience and Mental Health Among Indigenous Women During COVID-19 | Kristi Ka`apu, LCSW, DSW Candidate, Tulane University & Rory Glover, MSW, PhD Candidate, Tulane University & Catherine E. O’Connor, PhD, LMSW, Tulane University (presentation)
Decolonizing Sex: Resisting settler sexuality through a sex positive lens. | Kristin Spooner, DSW, Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, Board Certified Sex Therapist, The Radical Social Worker (Private Practice)
EMDR Therapy Approaches with BIPOC Clients and Addressing Culturally Based Trauma and Adversity | Mark Nickerson, LICSW, EMDR Institute Trainer and Clinical Consultant (presentation slides)
(presentation recording)
Closing Address
Dawn Matera Bassett, LCSW, Ph.D. and Teiriana Ibarra Event Planning Specialist
Date: February 16, 2024
Time: 10:00am – 2:00pm MST
Location: Zoom Webinar 2024 MBHC CONFERENCE
Keynote Address Presentation
With Dr. Loretta Ross, with The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture
Breakout Sessions 1
Culturally Adaptive Mental Health Practices: Centering the Counter Narrative
Sense-Making: Using Narrative Storytelling Across the Lifespan with Althea Simpson, LCSW, RPT-S
Embodiment Healing techniques with Dr. AT
Building Bridges: The utilization of a narrative humanization approach in the fight to reduce and unlearn stigmatizing belief with Dr. Kristin Spooner, DSW, LICSW,
Breakout Sessions 2
Supervision and the Healing Process
Using Storytelling as a Supervisory Technique with Dr. Omekio Riggins, DSW, LCSW, LCAS-A, CCTP-II, LPN
Authenticity in Practice with Dr. Andrea Daniels, DSW, LCSW-S
Infusing Cultural Humility into your supervision session; promoting Brave Spaces with Manasseh Begay,
Closing Address
Dawn Matera Bassett, LCSW, Ph.D. and Teiriana Ibarra Event Planning Specialist
Friday, February 17, 2023 | 10:00 AM to 2:15 PM (MST)
Auraria Campus | Denver, CO
The 4th Annual Mental & Behavioral Health Conference consisted of three (3) hours and provided knowledge regarding the emerging mental and behavioral health trends in the State of Colorado since the Pandemic. Participants acquired knowledge about workforce resilience and how to best support LGBTQ+ and BIPOC populations.
Participants were:
- Able to discuss the state of the mental and behavioral health crisis in Colorado
- Able to describe services to support mental and behavioral health needs in Colorado
- Learned about emerging Mental and Behavioral Health services to support LGBTQ+ and BIPOC populations
- Understood the importance of addressing Work Force Resilience
This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $1.9M with no funds financed with non-governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.
Conference Schedule
10:00 AM – Welcome Address
10:10 AM – Keynote Address: State of Mental and Behavioral Health Crisis in Colorado
10:30 AM – Keynote Panel Discussion: Crisis in Care(moderated by Dr. Tanya Greathouse)
- Speakers:
- DJ Ida, Asian Pacific Center
- Chris Richardson, Mental Health Center of Denver
- Leanne Rupp, National Association of Social Workers – CO Chapter
11:35 AM – Morning Breakout Sessions: The Macro Perspective of the Mental Health Crisis
- State Trends in Mental Health Services Needs Through a National Lens Since the Pandemic with Kim Patton, PsyD
- Emerging Trends in Mental and Behavioral Health Due to the Pandemic with Kate Parker, LCSW VP Clinical Care, COO, and Sara Reid, M.A., MHP Grants and Program Evaluation Manager
- Professional Development: The Ins & Outs of Licensure, Continuing Education in CO, & ASWB Exam Developments with Leanne Rupp, MSW, LCSW Executive Director
12:30 PM – Lunch and Student Tabling
1:10 PM – Afternoon Breakout Discussion: Emerging Issues in Mental and Behavioral Health
- Being Hopeful and Resilient in the Workplace with Susan Archuleta, Grants Community Liaison Specialist
- Emerging Issues in the LGBTQ+ Community: ‘Til Death Do Us Part with Li Brookens, LCSW, CGP, WPATH GEI SOC7 Certified Member, and Virginia Sanford, LPC
- Supporting BIPOC Communities Through Mental and Behavioral Health Crises with Sarah Naomi Jones, Center for Trauma and Resilience
2:05 PM – Closing Address
Sponsored by the MSU Denver College of Health and Human Sciences, MSU Denver Department of Social Work, and MSU Denver Health Institute
Friday, January 29, 2021 | 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM (MST)
Virtual Webinar | Denver, CO
The 3rd Annual Social Work Mental & Behavioral Health Conference was an opportunity for students, faculty, and community members to connect virtually with community and national experts on their response to the mental and behavioral challenges communities are experiencing due COVID-19, the exposed racialized tensions, and this country’s political divide.
Two (2) hours of CE credits pending approval by NASW-CO
Presenters
Welcoming Address: Dr. Dawn Matera-Bassett, MSW, LCSW, HRSA Principle Investigator & Associate Professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver
Keynote Speaker & Moderator: Dr. Julie Clockston, LCSW, National Association of Social Workers Colorado (NASWCO) Chapter President
Presenters:
- Dr. Liz Mendez-Shannon, MSW, Vice President of Program Development at Sewall Child Development Center
- Dr. Pam Begay, LCSW, Psychotherapist, Farmington, New Mexico
- Dr. Larry Curry, LCSW, CAC III, Founder and CEO, Clinical Director of The Curry Center LLC
- Enid Nieves, MSW Candidate, Director of Hotline Services at the Center for Trauma and Resilience
- Sonam Khanal, LCSW, Asian Pacific Development Center
Closing Keynote: Dr. Judith Kay Nelson, MSW, LCSW, Dean Emerita at the Sanville Institute for Clinical Social Work
Closing Remarks: Dr. Joni Handran, LCSW, CAC III