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45 Years of Service | 1972 - 2017 13 CHC Behavioral Health Behavioral health, which has risen in public interest and atten- tion in recent years, has been a primary component at CHC for some time. Kearney, who has been at CHC for nearly two decades, said leadership recognized early on that "we provide better care be- cause it is integrated care." e commitment to a coordinated care model bringing behavioral health clinicians and primary care pro- viders together hasn't wavered. "Gradually and organically," he said, it has grown in depth and breadth. e behavioral health team includes psychologists, social work- ers, marriage and family therapists, drug and alcohol counselors, psychiatrists, and psychiatric APRNs. ey deliver compassionate, effective, efficient, culturally sensitive care to clients of every age and background, responding to medically underserved communities. Kearney stresses that "the focus is not on illness, it is on health." And relationships. He recalls the 20- year-old patient who said de- finitively, "I have a doctor," when she was hospitalized recently, with follow-up care at CHC. ey had first crossed paths when she was 5 years old, and a handful of times in intervening years. e connec- tion — and confidence in the quality of care provided — is enor- mously beneficial and highlights the intersection of people, data and research at CHC. "Getting the right data in front of the right people" is at the heart of efforts to extract information from electronic health records that can be formatted in a way that can better inform health care deci- sion-making, explains Nicholas Ciaburri, director of business intel- ligence at CHC. Behavioral health clinicians are provided a list of patients to be seen that day by the medical staff, and who may potentially be helped by a behavioral health consultation during their visit. Kear- "Doing therapy is like emptying out all the pieces of a puzzle and then putting it together without a picture. I like figuring it out and helping people. And these are people who need our help." - R. Timothy Kearney, PhD, Chief Behavioral Health Officer Tichianna Armah, MD, Psychiatrist and Behavioral Health Medical Director, CHC Stamford