Maureen Traverse

Background

About Maureen Traverse

Maureen Traverse is an evaluator, management analyst, program manager, researcher and writer with experience in the non-profit, for-profit and government sectors, with a passion for improving care and outcomes in the behavioral health field. As a program evaluator, she supports Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers that have received SAMHSA grants to grow services. At A-G Associates, she has also served as the Education Programs Manager on the Veterans Affairs National Safeguard Initiative to Prevent Veteran Suicide, she began building the National Education Plan, a comprehensive, scalable strategy to inform suicide prevention efforts at flagship pilot sites, in the surrounding communities, and to inform future suicide prevention efforts at the VA. As a freelance researcher for A-G, Maureen supported the SAMHSA CSAT Logistical Support contract, participating in a literature search on the integration of opioid use disorder treatment in primary care, synthesizing research, drafting portions of the literature review report, and revising sections of the SAMHSA Overdose Prevention and Response Toolkits based on research and input from subject matter experts. Prior to joining A-G, Maureen was the Education Manager for Mental Health America of Ohio, where she led educational programming for Peer Recovery Supporters (PRS), other mental health professionals, and community members. She started the agency’s PRS program and grew it beyond certification training to provide technical assistance and support to PRS at all stages of their careers and launched a twice-annual continuing education and recruitment event for PRS, the first of its kind in the community. Her close partnerships with local behavioral health providers led to the creation of an internship program to supplement the training required for PRS to join the workforce. Under her management, MHAOhio’s education programs trained 500 PRS to work in Central Ohio, 1500 community members in Adult and Youth Mental Health First Aid, and over mental health professionals in youth mental health clinical practice and suicide prevention. Maureen holds a BA from Loyola University of Maryland and a MFA in Creative Writing from The Ohio State University. She is also a fiction writer whose work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, CutBank, and Prime Number literary journals. Her novel manuscript was on the short list for the 2022 Southeast Missouri State University Press Nilsen Prize and the 2019 Craft First Chapters Contest, and earned her a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship in 2018.