Dr. Skeem was an invited speaker at the 3rd Annual Sozosei Summit to Decriminalize Mental Illness. The mission of the Sozosei Foundation is to be a catalyst for ideas that nurture creative solutions for healthier communities. Their primary focus is to eliminate the use of jails and prisons for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness by improving access to mental health care in communities across the nation.

One Call, Three Questions: Transforming the Culture of Emergency Response – Mental health calls received to 911 Call Centers are frequently coded by the call taker as “criminal,” even when there is no public safety risk. Redefining long-standing culture and policy behavior in emergency response requires a paradigm shift to person-centered and procedurally just practices as benchmarks for building community resilience. This panel explores system transformation for call centers, emphasizing the importance of using evidence informed tools to structure judgment, identify care preferences and the use of sustained practices that result in a reliable and equitable response during a crisis.