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HHS Secretary Alex Azar Pushes for Mental Health in Schools HHS Secretary Alex Azar said his agency wants to support mental health integration in schools after he applauded the state of Wisconsin’s efforts on a recent visit there. Last month, Azar visited Adams-Friendship Middle School in Adams, Wis., along with Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use Elinore McCance-Katz and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (see CEO Update, July 27, 2018). He reflected on that visit as a guest columnist recently in the Wisconsin State Journal. “Over 7 million American children suffer from serious emotional disturbance, which can impede key life activities like being able to learn in school,” Azar wrote in his column. “We need to be identifying signs of these conditions not only to help these children, but also because early identification and treatment can make these conditions much less severe down the road,” he added. “Given the amount of time children spend in school, as many teachers and school personnel as possible should be trained in identifying warning signs and symptoms.”   CDC Data Show Continued Increases in Opioid Morbidity and Mortality More than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017, reflecting a nearly 7-percent increase from the year before, according to provisional death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week. Of those deaths, about 49,000 were caused by opioids, the data showed, although provisional death data can often be incomplete and underestimated.   The Atlanta-based agency also reported an upward trend in the number of Emergency Medical System (EMS) naloxone administration events, as the agency reported a 75.1 percent increase in the rate of these events from 2012 through 2016. Meanwhile, the number of pregnant women with opioid use disorder (OUD) at labor and delivery more than quadrupled from 1999 through 2014, according to the CDC’s first multi-state analysis of trends in OUD in labor and delivery. OUD during pregnancy has been associated with a number of negative health outcomes for both mothers and babies, including maternal death, pre-term birth, stillbirth, and neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS. JAMA Study Links Brain Injury to Suicide Risk Traumatic brain injury may be associated with an increased risk of suicide, according to new research from Denmark that was published in JAMA. Traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, can have serious long-term consequences, including psychiatric disorders. Using data from the Danish Cause of Death Register—that included 34,529 deaths by suicide over 35 years—researchers found that individuals with medical contact for traumatic brain injury, compared with the general population without traumatic brain injury, had an increased risk of suicide. Click here to read the study. PHP PEPPER Review Webinar Recording Now Available The recording and transcription for the Aug. 2 PEPPER Review webinar, along with a handout and questions-and-answers document, is now available. Click here to find the materials on the PHP “Training and Resources” page. CMS to Host Webinar to Better Understand Medicaid Populations with Serious Mental Illness The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Accelerator Program (IAP) will host a webinar next month that features a new technical resource that could help state Medicaid agencies gather information about Medicaid beneficiaries who have a serious mental illness. The webinar will provide an overview of the technical resource, example analyses, and a discussion with state Medicaid leaders from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia who will share their insights. It’s intended to help states understand key demographic attributes of this population, their Medicaid use, and costs related to that use. Click here to register for the webinar that is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 6 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET. SAMHSA Announces CSAT National Advisory Council Meeting in September The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) National Advisory Council will meet on Monday, Sept. 17 to discuss and evaluate grant applications. Although the meeting is closed to the public, more information about the CSAT National Advisory Council—including Council biographies—is available here. Save the Date for the NABH 2019 Annual Meeting! Please save the date and plan to join us at the Mandarin Oriental Washington, D.C. from March 18-20, 2019 for the 2019 NABH Annual Meeting. NABH will provide additional information in upcoming editions of CEO Update. For questions about CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.