How do you imagine higher education today? Probably a large lecture hall, boring seminars and piles of books collecting dust. Yet, educators and institutions around the world are making strides every day in creating better learning environments, higher knowledge retention, peaked interests, and ultimately a higher education that has been '€˜reimagined'€™.

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is the largest pediatric healthcare network in the United States, consisting of over 50 locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Its campus in West Philadelphia comprises a 535-bed hospital, the Richard D. Wood Pediatric Ambulatory Care Center, the Children&'€™s Seashore House, the Ruth and Tristram Colket, Jr. Translational Research Building, the Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Pediatric Research Center and the Buerger Center for Advanced Pediatric Care, a state-of-the-art outpatient facility slated to open in 2015.

On January 7, 2008, in his inaugural address to the city of Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter pledged this: "To the law-abiding citizens of Philadelphia, I say we are the great majority. To the lawbreakers, you are in the small minority. This is our city and we'€™re taking it back every day, every block, every neighborhood, everywhere in Philadelphia, because I'€™ve had enough and I'€™m not playing around about it,"€ a bold but much-needed call to action in a city that at the time was looking at some of the highest crime statistics in decades and had been nicknamed 'Killadelphia'€.

In June 1967, five individuals joined together and incorporated '€œto develop, coordinate and execute programs to achieve effective communication of information, services and techniques for family planning in the community.'  For 17 years, this organization, named Better Family Planning, successfully operated eight neighborhood clinics and family planning information centers in North and West Philadelphia.

A long time ago, when I was an undergrad in college (this was before Al Gore had invented the Internet), things were simpler. For-profit entities existed to make money, governments existed to regulate the playing field and nonprofit entities existed to do good wherever for-profits wouldn’t and governments didn’t serve. Each sector did its thing, and people knew which sector they wanted to work in.

In every corner of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) is driving growth, spurring investment, creating jobs and revitalizing neighborhoods and communities. For more than 50 years, PIDC has attracted, managed and invested public and private resources in the businesses and organizations, communities and markets that energize Philadelphia'€™s economy. We work with companies large and small, for-profit and nonprofit in all areas of the city. It is our job to make Philadelphia a thriving robust city, and we love doing it.

In April 2014 Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC), the largest and most comprehensive public health institute in the country, took on the complex task of moving the firm'€™s headquarters. PHMC completely, and intentionally, transformed its work environment from an aging, traditional cubicle workspace into an open, industrial-style space to better support employee collaboration, creativity and communication. It was not just about changing a physical location -€“ it was about using physical space to better support a mission of creating and sustaining healthier communities, starting from the inside out.

The Philadelphia Foundation places a high value on cultivating the youth voice in both word and in deed. It is no secret that too many youth in Philadelphia struggle with the stresses of poverty, violence and self-worth. The Fund for Children (FFC) of The Philadelphia Foundation (TPF) supports opportunities for youth to be their own catalysts for change.

The School District of Philadelphia matched the City of Philadelphia’s Out of School Time (OST) program participants with district student identification numbers to compare program participation to academic and behavioral outcomes at school. The first task of the analysis was to compare OST attendance for all participants to attendance for OST participants who were matched with a district student identification number. This analysis determined the degree to which there was a difference between the groups, with regard to program attendance. Table 1 describes the participants with district student identification numbers (“Matched Students”) and Table 2 describes all students identified as having participated in the City’s OST programs (“All Students”).

High front line staff turnover in OST programs, often within a year of hire, can be disruptive to programming for many reasons. The estimated cost of turnover is roughly between 33% and 50% of a youth worker’s yearly salary when taking into account basic training and recruitment costs (Wilson, 2009). Additionally, turnover disrupts relationships between youth and staff. These relationships are key elements of an effective OST program that leads to improved outcomes for youth, but are difficult to build when youth see their mentors routinely come and go.

As the intermediary for the Out-of-School Time System (the OST System) funded by the City of Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS), Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC) provides professional development to staff members from the 200 OST programs that are part of the OST System. PHMC strives to provide professional development (PD) opportunities that are responsive, rigorous, and based on the latest evidence about effective practices. By housing professional development in the same organization that also observes and monitors performance and quality, the OST System is able to capitalize on PHMC’s institutional knowledge. Additionally, PHMC is able to leverage its relationships, and constant communication with providers to ensure that the PD opportunities offered respond to the needs of providers.

Out-of-school time (OST) is a growing field that includes after-school, evening, weekend and summer positive youth development and workforce development programs. Research demonstrates that OST professional development is a powerful intervention that enhances program quality and student impact (Weiss, 2005, 2006).

Professional Development is a powerful tool in the continuing process of Out-of-School Time (OST) program quality improvement. Through ongoing staff development, OST programs are better positioned to achieve key outcomes. Additionally, by developing and supporting staff, OST programs build strong relationships with their staff and reduce the frequency of disruptive turnover.

In youth development work, as in many social service arenas, there has been a historical tension between standardization and innovation.  On one hand, both service providers and funders want to increase the reach, or scale, of successful programs so that as many participants can reap the benefits as possible.  On the other hand, as programs are scaled and ever larger systems are created, individual service providers often lose the freedom to innovate and respond to the unique needs of their clients or communities.

The Beck Institute has had an interesting evolution. Aaron T. Beck, M.D., the founder of cognitive therapy, and I established the institute in 1994 in suburban Philadelphia. Initially we focused on clinical work, and our onsite and distance training programs were relatively small. While we still have an active clinic for individuals with mental health issues, we have realized our vision of becoming a national and international resource and training center. Two factors greatly aided our exponential growth. One, there was an explosion of research, well over a thousand randomized controlled trials, that demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for a range of psychiatric disorders, psychological issues and medical conditions with psychological components. Two, the Internet exposed literally millions of professionals, students, researchers, educators and consumers to CBT. (Our websites alone now attract over 100,000 visitors per year, and we are very active in social media.)

We are at a watershed moment in behavioral health. Substance abuse and mental health treatment and policies are poised to be positively transformed in the coming years. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)  and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (Parity Act)  will ultimately bring about the functional integration of care for substance use and behavioral health disorders into the rest of health care, ensure that these illnesses are cared for equally with other medical disorders and significantly improve outcomes for patients and society. Through this constructive disruption in the current segregated health care system, we expect growing public understanding about addiction and mental illness, more active and informed consumerism and a demand for more research and higher-quality treatment for these disorders.

The integration of behavioral and physical health has become a national priority as increasing evidence points to the connection between adverse experiences, behavioral health and a wide range of physical health problems across the life span. This mounting research is critical to understanding and providing the best possible treatments to those affected by mental health issues, but it also speaks to policy decisions related to health care spending. While much of the planning and efforts toward integration have involved services to adults, it is critical to understand and include the needs of children. This article will address some key differences in planning for integration between these populations, discuss the special circumstances faced when dealing with children, and highlight models and strategies that have been undertaken and show promise.

“Five killed, shooter turns gun on self.” So runs an all-too-familiar headline; a paragraph later, it is reported that the shooter had a history of mental illness, and an implicit causal connection is drawn between violence and mental illness. But is it the case that mentally ill persons are more dangerous than non-mentally ill persons? Is there a connection between mental illness and violence? And if so, what should we do about it?

There is no doubt that we are in an era of significant policy and practice change for behavioral health and the broader health care field. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, the Affordable Care Act and the National Dialogue on Mental Health have all brought increased focus and attention on health care. Unfortunately, a number of large-scale incidents of violence have also ignited inaccurate conversations about the association between violence and mental illness.

While working for Teach for America, Alyson Goodner witnessed the lack of quality, differentiated professional development opportunities for educators and school leaders, in addition to the lack of best practice and resource sharing betweenPhiladelphia schools. She was inspired to develop a tool that would help break down the silos and encourage the sharing of lesson plans, professional development experiences and other items to improve the city’s schools. While she had experience working in the education field, she recognizedthat she was lacking the quantitative background to develop the tool and business she wanted.