October 13th from 11:30am-1:30pm via zoom
Nirmala Dhar is a licensed clinical social worker with a Master’s in Social Work from the Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri and Bombay University, India. She is mission driven with 36 years of experience in behavioral health in the public sector in Missouri, New Jersey, and Oregon and has worked in every aspect of service delivery across the continuum of care. She has worked in-patient at a state hospital, crisis services , ED crisis, outpatient, partial hospitalization, mental health consultant in a hospital setting, EAP. She is the Older Adult Behavioral Health Initiative Project Director for Oregon Health Authority ‘s Health Systems Division since 2015. She has oversight of the Older Adult BH Initiative, PASRR Level II program and Enhanced Care Services. She is the OHA Champion for the Geriatric BH ECHO Clinic for Nursing Facilities. Prior to this position she worked for Clackamas County Behavioral Health for 18 years. This included 10 years as the only geriatric mental health specialist, a clinical program supervisor of the community support team and as a policy analyst on the Health Administration Team. She is a trainer and presenter on behavioral health and aging topics and is a CIT trainer. She is passionate about disability justice and brings an equity lens to her work. Her areas of professional interest include improving behavioral health access in long term care settings, positive aging and age pride, social justice, quality improvement, health metrics, workforce development and the intersection of mental health and the law. She also enjoys being a mentor to younger professionals who share her values. Nirmala enjoys gardening, reading non-fiction and travel. She considers herself a foodie! She is married to Sanjay and lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
