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Welcome to the 10th Annual Carolinas Conference 26 credit hours available plus preconference hours I want to personally invite you to attend this year’s Carolinas Conference on Addiction and Recovery, to be held October 28-31 at the Sheraton Hotel in Chapel Hill, NC. It is the 10th year of this conference and it has grown in size and impact every year. This year promises to be our best year yet! Each year we pick a theme and create a “conference persona” around that theme. Last year it was Creating Communities of Healers and our whole conference was focused on understanding how, by expanding community support, we can improve quality care to clients. We sought to help conference participants think about their individual roles in creating and maintaining communities of healers. I know of numerous instances where people began to make a real difference in their home communities as a result of what they learned in Chapel Hill, such as (1)planning for a new health and wellness center in Polk County, NC that will provide integrated care to underserved citizens; (2)developing the Substance Abuse Academy in Guilford County, NC that brought together stakeholders from across the county to learn about substance use disorders and to support community efforts to effectively address gaps in service; and (3)members of the North Carolina Addiction Fellows Program in the Winston-Salem area creating a personal and professional training program for area professionals. Ideas are presented at this conference through quality teaching by outstanding faculty. Attendees test these ideas with several hundred colleagues from a dozen states. They get to meet representatives from some of the finest treatment programs in the country who exhibit at the conference. Our association with the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at UNC Chapel Hill provides us with the very best and latest research from their own staff and from esteemed colleagues around the country. We provide a workbook so that every participant can determine how they can take what they have learned at the conference and implement it in their personal and professional lives when they return home. The Carolinas Conference on Addiction and Recovery is not your typical educational conference---this one actually makes a difference by combining new knowledge and increased passion with a plan for personal action! This year our theme is Integrative Care: A Holistic Approach to Recovery. We will continue to focus on recovery as the defining element in what we do as we look at various ways that such a focus plays out in our individual and agency agendas. We will hear from leaders in our field who have helped to create and implement Recovery Oriented Systems of Care. We will consider ways to expand opportunities to help people in need by taking SBIRT (screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment) programs to primary care providers. We will again hear from some of the most respected researchers in the field and we will be inspired and taught by a wonderful faculty. Please see the schedule for details. If you want to enhance your personal and professional lives in ways that benefit you and your clients, this conference is the place to be. I hope to see you in Chapel Hill, October 28-31! Warm regards,
Jim Van Hecke
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