
- This event has passed.
Webinar | Revolutionizing Behavioral Health: The Role of Behavioral Health Apps in Addressing the Workforce Crisis
November 28, 2023 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm MST
In an era marked by unprecedented challenges to mental health and well-being, the demand for behavioral health services has surged. This has intensified the already existing crisis within the behavioral health workforce, making it more critical than ever to explore innovative solutions. While the field is young, behavioral health apps are emerging as a promising technology to support health and wellbeing in both mental and physical health. Join us for an insightful and informative panel discussion with experts from the industry and academia where we delve into the potentially transformative power of behavioral health apps and technology as solutions to increase access, improve outcomes, and address the pressing workforce crisis.
Key highlights of this webinar include:
- Review highlights of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) issue brief that provides an overview of the field and the potential of apps and other digital technologies to improve access to behavioral health in primary care;
- Learn about three apps that have been implemented in multiple locations in the US and abroad, focused on youth mental health, recovery supports, and contingency management;
- Understand opportunities to leverage technology for better outcomes and workforce support; and
- Discuss considerations for how to implement behavioral health technologies as a complement to existing services.
This event is open to all!
When: November 28, 2023 | 1pm-2pm PT / 2pm-3pm MT / 3pm-4pm CT / 4pm-5pm ET
Presenters:
Dr. David R. Gastfriend M.D., DFASAM | Addiction Psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School
Dr. Garrett E. Moran, Ph.D. | Principal Investigator for the Academy for Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care
Harris Eyre, M.D., Ph.D. | Kooth Digital Health
Hans Morefield | CEO of CHESS Health
Presenter Information

Dr. Gastfriend is an addiction psychiatrist. At Harvard Medical School, he directed
addiction research at Massachusetts General Hospital and was an investigator in the NIDA Cocaine Collaborative Study, NIAAA’s COMBINE Study and NIDA’s Clinical Trials Network. As Vice President at Alkermes, Inc., he directed scientific publications on Vivitrol in clinical, criminal justice and health economics research.
His research led most states to endorse the American Society of Addiction Medicine
(ASAM) Criteria. His 150 scientific publications include the books The ASAM Criteria and Addiction Treatment Matching. His ASAM CONTINUUM – The ASAM Criteria Decision Engine ® and ASAM’s CO-Triage ® tools are being adopted nationwide.
In 2016, he co-founded DynamiCare Health, a nationally-scalable technology for
Contingency Management and predictive analytics, winning awards from Harvard
Business School, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Governor of Ohio, and the New York Times. He has consulted to governments in Belgium, China, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Russia and the U.S.

Garrett E. Moran, Ph.D., serves as the the Principal Investigator for the Academy for Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care, a program sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and served as Project Director of the Academy from 2010 until 2018. He is deeply committed to advancing holistic, person-centered health care. Dr. Moran retired in 2021 from his role as the Associate Director of Services and Policy Innovation in the Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, and Professor in the School of Public Health and the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry at West Virginia University (WVU). Before coming to WVU he was a Vice President and Associate Director at Westat where he worked for 29 years.
Dr. Moran has more than 50 years of experience in public policy, program evaluation, research, and management. His career has included key leadership roles on projects for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), as well as consulting roles with states working on health reform and care
integration. His major areas of substantive expertise include integrated healthcare delivery, health care financing, health information technology, and program evaluation. Dr. Moran directed the consultant support and writing contract for the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in the early 2000s, and subsequently served as an Advisor and Consultant to the States of Maryland and Ohio as they developed mental health transformation plans.
From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Moran served as behavioral health commissioner in the Department of Health and Human Resources for the State of West Virginia. In this role, he guided public policy related to people with mental or substance use disorders, developmental disabilities, and older adults. Dr. Moran is also a clinical psychologist, whose early career included several years of direct clinical work with people with behavioral health disorders.

Dr. Eyre is a mental and brain health-focused systems executive. He has trained in clinical psychiatry, neuroscience, health administration, health entrepreneurship, and public policy. With these experiences, he’s looking to impact mental and brain health at scale.
He was co-founder and chief medical officer of a precision mental health company. In this capacity, he worked in teams towards many industry firsts. That is, the first depression pharmacogenetic tool to be used by a large integrated delivery network, as well as in a large primary care network. Noted by the US VA as the most promising tool for depression, he co-led the securing of philanthropic funding for the first independently funded multicenter RCT for pharmacogenetics in severe mood disorders.
His other key positions are Senior Fellow at Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute and Lead at the Brain Capital Alliance. He advises the HEKA Fund, the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association, Kooth, and is a member of the Champion’s Cabinet of the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative and The University of Sydney’s Mental Wealth Initiative.
He is an alumnus of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Fulbright Scholar program, and an awardee of the EB1A Green Card, an honor typically reserved for Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners. He has authored 190+ papers with 1000s of coauthors in journals such as World Psychiatry, and Lancet Psychiatry, and was the lead editor of the book ‘Convergence Mental Health’ (Oxford Press).
Dr Eyre maintains adjunct positions with Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston (UTHealth), Houston Methodist, and Deakin University’s IMPACT (Institute for Mental and Physical Health and Clinical Translation).

Hans Morefield is the CEO of CHESS Health, a leading digital health company focused on the lifecycle of substance use disorder, with solutions from prevention to intervention to treatment and recovery support, including the evidence-based Connections App. In his six years at CHESS, Hans has overseen the build-out of its platform and its adoption by treatment providers, state and local governments, and a dozen health plans, positively impacting the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. He is also the co-Principal Investigator of a NIH-funded study of the potential for mobile technology to prevent the onset of substance use disorder. Hans is a graduate and trustee of Kalamazoo College, where he started his now thirty-year career in applying technology to improve the healthcare system and the lives of individuals.