Introducing Kana Enomoto

I first met Kana Enomoto in the spring of 2011  the first year I served on the SAMHSA CMS Advisory Board. Kana was serving as Administrator Hyde’s Principal Deputy Administrator. In this capacity, she was the principal advisor to Administrator Hyde on operations, policies and programmatic activities for the agency. Some of you may recognize her name. Most of you may not. So, it seems like a good idea to introduce you to this amazing woman right now - prepare yourself for an interesting account of an inspiring life story.

This fall, Kana stepped in as the Acting Administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) when former Administrator Pam Hyde resigned a few months ago. Kana is a career federal employee and has been Principal Deputy of SAMHSA for the past three years. Whether there is a new presidential nominee for SAMHSA Administrator in this administration or the next, Kana will still be there. In fact she had been there for a very long time.

Let’s take a step into the past and trace the academic and professional steps that brought her to this point. Kana earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s degree in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also a graduate of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Senior Managers in Government Program. She received a long string of awards that acknowledge the wonderful contributions she has made.

Kana is no stranger to the field of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and has over 23 years of experience in the behavioral health field. She has been with SAMHSA since 1998 and for the past 15 years has served in a variety of high-level management roles.  Now and for the next several months, Kana is acting Administrator for SAMHSA, not a small job! 

SAMHSA’s mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities. It has a workforce of over 600 employees in four centers and four different offices with a fiscal year budget of about $3.6 billion.

According to the SAMHSA website, the behavioral health workforce is one of the fastest growing workforces in the country with a projected increase of 11% by 2020. This is based on an expected increase in insurance coverage for mental health and substance use services brought about by passage of health reform and parity legislation and the rising rate of military veterans seeking behavioral health services. This will result in serious workforce shortages for health professionals and paraprofessionals across the United States. 

Kana described the plans SAMHSA is implementing to develop strategies for addressing the workforce issues including recruiting, training and retaining a diverse behavioral health workforce.  The goal is to support the development of a workforce that can provide successful prevention, treatment and recovery services. I was happy to learn that this includes the development of peer providers in all public health and health care delivery settings. SAMHSA has released a draft of peer competencies for public comment. Here’s a link where you can review it. There  is also an emphasis on supporting families as supporters to other families. 

I also talked with Kana about the mission of PRA and our focus on workforce development. This is an area she is passionate about since it is crucial to creating future services that promote wellness and recovery. PRA can play a critical role in addressing the challenges of workforce development, particularly with the focus psychiatric rehabilitation offers.

My conversation with Kana has heightened my belief that PRA is perfectly positioned to play a very meaningful role in helping SAMHSA reach the goal of creating and sustaining a behavioral health workforce for the future. Our vision of developing a workforce that is steeped in the values of psychiatric rehabilitation, recovery, resilience and wellness is a perfect match for the significant national workforce needs in our future. 

The key to PRA participation at this level rests not only on our leaders and the great staff of our association, but in the strength and knowledge that rests in our chapters. The chapters are where the “rubber meets the road” and where recruiting new members can be the most significant. So at all levels of our association we need to focus on what we have to offer the future workforce and be willing to step up and promote our values and vision in ways that influence the work we do and the work that needs to be done in the future.