If any question exemplifies the ever-changing HHS landscape, it’s this one, as – in a matter of a few short years – 33 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, and 10 states and DC have legalized recreational use of cannabis. These decisions are likely to have profound implications on human services delivery affecting child support, public assistance and child protective services. As such, there is growing interest in states on how to address these issues as more states legalize cannabis in one form or another.
It’s also the kind of issue that CompTIA’s Human Services Information Technology Advisory Group’s Content and Issues Committee was built for.
For 25 years, the Human Services Information Technology Advisory Group (HSITAG) has been identifying and monitoring critical HHS issues, including reaching out to state and federal officials, with a particular focus on how technology systems and automation could be used to help improve the lives of HHS professionals and the constituencies they serve. Today, one of the means by which HSITAG continues to examine current topics is through its Content and Issues Committee, which scans the HHS landscape for issues or projects that they believe HSITAG should be involved with and working on.
The purpose of the Committee is to identify legislation, regulations, policy and/or program issues at the federal or state levels that could have an impact on program or technology/system issues affecting health and human services programs. When issues are identified that could have an impact on the broader HSITAG membership, the Committee makes recommendations to the HSITAG Executive Council as to whether workgroups should further research, study, and analyze them and determine a course of action.
That’s how the Implications of Legalized Cannabis on HHS workgroup was recently formed. It will look at the licensing, regulatory, systems, and administrative issues associated with the growing trend of marijuana legalization around the country.
Based on the Content and Issues Committee’s recommendation, HSITAG also formed a second workgroup to look at Homelessness and Opioid Use. This topic will be examined from a “whole person” perspective to identify the range of issues affecting the homeless and associated substance use disorders. Again, this is an issue that has grown to a critical stage in numerous states. Many jurisdictions are seeing an increase in the level of homelessness in their communities, and an associated high level of opioid use among this population. The work group will take a look at not only opioid use, but other social determinants that come into play affecting the homeless population.
These are the kinds of issues the Content and Issues Committee discusses on a regular basis -- focusing on what is top-of-mind in the HHS community, sharing information based on our work in the states, and monitoring topics at the federal level.
We want to hear from you – on legalized cannabis, opioid use and homelessness, and any other topic that you feel HHS professionals need to get ahead of or become more aware of. The Content and Issues Committee wants to focus on your content and your issues.
To do that, we want – and need – you to be part of the conversation.
For more information on joining CompTIA and HSITAG, go here.
