For All Seasons is partnering with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Maryland to offer Suicide Bereavement Support Group Facilitator training on June 6 and 7, 2025 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. at Anchor Church, located at 620 Goldsborough Street in Easton.

This training, which offers CEUs, is for mental health professionals and survivors of suicide loss who want to start a support group and current group facilitators who want to strengthen their skills, stay up to date on the latest practices, and explore issues they have encountered while facilitating. It is recommended for participation that survivors of suicide loss have waited at least two years after experiencing a suicide loss, and non-clinicians have at least one year of experience participating in a support group.

By the end of this training, participants will understand: the unique needs of suicide loss survivors; develop skills to facilitate a safe and supportive group environment; apply effective communication and active listening techniques; recognize and respond to crisis situations within a support group setting; and utilize AFSP resources and best practices for group facilitation.

“This is an excellent opportunity for the Center for Learning at For All Seasons to help create a community-based support network around suicide bereavement. We have seen this issue impact our community in significant ways over the last several years. This is an effort to help address those needs,” comments Lauren Weber, Vice President of Strategy & Development at For All Seasons.

Two professional trainers will lead the training. Joan Schweizer Hoff has worked for over 25 years at The Dougy Center, National Center for Grieving Children and Families, in Portland, Oregon. She has over 40 years of experience working with children and families and has served on local and national boards. She is a member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s National Loss and Healing Council. She is a trainer for AFSP Facilitator Training, organizes Survivor of Suicide Loss Day, coordinates Healing Conversations, and supports the Out of the Darkness Walks. She conducts training nationally and internationally on issues related to program development, the impact of suicide, trauma, and violent death on children, teens, and their families, crisis response, and children and teen grief.

Wendy M. Resnick, R.N., M.S., C.S., works as a Nurse Practitioner in Psychiatry. She has worked as a psychiatric nurse in inpatient psychiatry and chemical dependency centers. She co-founded The Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association (DRADA), a non-profit organization in collaboration with The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She developed a network of mutual-help support groups across the Mid-Atlantic area and a one-to-one peer support program serving individuals nationwide.

This two-day training includes lecture, interactive discussion, and role-playing, and participating clinicians will receive 14 Category I CEUs, issued by For All Seasons, Inc., an approved continuing education provider for Maryland Social Workers and Professional Counselors. The cost for the two-day training is $175 and includes breakfast, lunch, snacks, and all needed materials for both days. For more information or to register, visit the training website at bit.ly/SupportGroupFacilitatorTraining.

For All Seasons provides the highest quality mental health and victim services to children, adults, and families across the Mid-Shore and throughout the state of Maryland. Services are offered in both English and Spanish and include therapy, psychiatry, victim advocacy, 24-hour crisis hotlines, outreach, and community education. For information about For All Seasons walk-in hours, contact For All Seasons at 410-822-1018 or visit ForAllSeasonsInc.org.

In April, For All Seasons’ Sexual Assault Awareness focused on educating the community on the topic of drug-facilitated sexual assault. Its “Sip Safe” Campaign raised awareness about the risks associated with drug- and alcohol-facilitated sexual assault while promoting proactive behaviors that enhance personal and community safety.

For All Seasons staff brought the community into the conversation by collaborating with local organizations, businesses, and colleges to ensure that the issue of drug and alcohol-facilitated sexual assault is widely recognized and actively addressed. This initiative includes distributing free informational resources and drink-spiking prevention scrunchies to local college students and bartenders. Among the tips are how to identify risky situations when enjoying a night out and how to recognize if a drink has been spiked or tampered with (https://forallseasonsinc.lpages.co/sipsafe/)

For All Seasons also fostered community involvement by partnering with The Ivy Café in Easton to create awareness and show support for sexual assault survivors through its Denim Community Art Project. Community members wrote encouraging messages on patches of denim to show their support for sexual assault survivors. These patches will be displayed at The Ivy Café before becoming a permanent installation in the For All Seasons Rape Crisis Center.

For further information, visit ForAllSeasonsInc.org.

For All Seasons provides the highest quality mental health and victim services to children, adults, and families across the Mid-Shore and throughout the state of Maryland. Services are offered in both English and Spanish and include therapy, psychiatry, victim advocacy, 24-hour crisis hotlines, outreach, and community education. For information about For All Seasons walk-in hours, contact For All Seasons at 410-822-1018 or visit ForAllSeasonsInc.org.

 

Mid-Shore Community Foundation (MSCF) in Easton, Maryland has committed $3.8 million to University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UM SRH), a member organization of the University of Maryland Medical System, toward construction of the new UM Shore Regional Medical Center. 

“The mission of Mid-Shore Community Foundation to enhance the quality of life for individuals throughout the mid-shore region ties closely with Shore Regional Health’s goal to provide state-of-the-art health care,” said Buck Duncan, President, MSCF. “We are pleased to make this gift to advance health care in the region.”

Construction of the new medical center, located at 10000 Longwoods Road in Easton, Maryland, is scheduled for completion in summer 2028.

“It’s all about advancing health care in our communities now and for generations to come,” said Rebecca Bair, Vice President of Philanthropy, UM SRH. “We are so grateful for the leadership level support from the Mid-Shore Community Foundation.” 

“We are deeply grateful to the Mid-Shore Community Foundation for this transformative gift,” added Ken Kozel, UM SRH President and CEO. “The foundation’s generosity will have a lasting impact on community health care in the region.”

About University of Maryland Shore Regional Medical Center 

The new Shore Regional Medical Center will provide greater access to hospital services for residents of Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties. The state-of-the-art facility is designed to advance health care quality and access on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. In partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System, it will serve as a vital asset to recruit and retain physicians, advanced practice professionals and the clinical and support staff needed to provide high quality, clinically advanced medical care to the region.

Site: 230 acres

Hospital Details:

• Main Tower: 6 levels; 325,294 square feet Acute-Care
• Adjacent medical office and outpatient services building:
• 60,000 square feet
• Licensed Beds: 122 (private rooms)
• ED Treatment Bays: 27
• Adult Observation / Short Stay: 25
• Operating Rooms: 7
• Helipad
• Estimated Total Cost: $540 million

Replaces: University of Maryland Shore Medical Center on South Washington Street in Easton, Md.

Core Programs & Specialty Centers:

• Acute Rehabilitation Center
• Behavioral Health
• Birthing Center
• Cardiac Intervention Center
• Critical Care Medicine
• Emergency Services
• Neurosciences
• Orthopedics
• Vascular Services
• Women’s Services

Project Partners: 

• Covalus – Project Management
• HKS – Architect
• Whiting-Turner I Mahogany, Inc – Construction Manager

 

The public can follow construction progress at umshoreregional.org/rmc. For information about making a gift, contact Rebecca at 667-343-5509 or [email protected].

---

About University of Maryland Shore Regional Health 

A member organization of th(e University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UM SRH) is the principal provider of comprehensive health care services for more than 170,000 residents of five counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore: Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot. UM SRH consists of approximately 2,000 team members, including more than 600 health care providers on the Medical Staff, who work with community partners to advance the values that are foundational to our mission: Compassion, Discovery, Excellence, Diversity and Integrity. For more information, visit https://www.umms.org/shore.

 

About the University of Maryland Medical System

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is an academic private health system, focused on delivering compassionate, high quality care and putting discovery and innovation into practice at the bedside. Partnering with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland, Baltimore who educate the state’s future health care professionals, UMMS is an integrated network of care, delivering 25 percent of all hospital care in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state of Maryland. UMMS puts academic medicine within reach through primary and specialty care delivered at 11 hospitals, including the flagship University of Maryland Medical Center, the System’s anchor institution in downtown Baltimore, as well as through a network of University of Maryland Urgent Care centers and more than 150 other locations in 13 counties. For more information, visit www.umms.org.

Lara D. Wilson, MHA, has been named Director of External Affairs and Community Liaison for University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UM SRH), effective May 5, 2025. UM SRH is a member organization of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS).

Wilson has served UM SRH since 2021 as Director of Rural Health Care Transformation and, from January to August of last year, as Interim Vice President, Rural Health Care. She has a wealth of experience in hospital, non-profit and community health settings, as well as skills in organizational leadership, population health, strategic planning, project management and business development. 

Wilson’s focus in this newly-created position will be to develop, maintain and strengthen strategic relationships with key external stakeholders around the five-county region served by UM SRH. This will include responding to and initiating local legislative, regulatory and public policy changes that support the mission of UM SRH and UMMS.

‌During her tenure with UM SRH, Wilson has acted as liaison and facilitator of rural health care transformation projects; led the Age-Friendly Health System initiative across the System; and overseen the creation and implementation of community health programs with an emphasis on the aging population. She also engaged in collaborative relationships with local, regional and state agencies in support of rural health care transformation and UM Shore Medical Center at Chestertown.

“Lara’s focus on rural health transformation over the past few years will serve her well as Director of External Affairs and Community Liaison,” said Ken Kozel, MBA, UM SRH President and CEO. “In her new role, Lara will help us act on our mission of commitment to our community by strengthening existing collaborations and developing new partnerships with local and state officials, and with non-profit, civic and business organizations throughout our five-county region.”

‌Prior to joining UM SRH, Wilson served six years as executive director of the Maryland Rural Health Association, a state-wide education and advocacy organization. She also has presented on rural health care topics at local, state, and national conferences, and guest lectured on health care management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Maryland School of Public Health. 

Wilson earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park,  and her MS in Health Systems Administration from Georgetown University. She holds multiple specialty certifications in the field of health care management, and in 2021, she was honored as recipient of the Maryland Rural Health Advocate of the Year Award.    

A resident of Centreville, Md., Wilson is active in professional and community organizations, serving on boards and committees for the Queen Anne’s County Economic Development Commission, the Mid Shore Local Health Improvement Coalition, and Centreville Methodist Church, among others.

 

---

About University of Maryland Shore Regional Health 

A member organization of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UM SRH) is the principal provider of comprehensive health care services for more than 170,000 residents of five counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore: Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot. UM SRH consists of approximately 2,000 team members, including more than 600 health care providers on the Medical Staff, who work with community partners to advance the values that are foundational to our mission: Compassion, Discovery, Excellence, Diversity and Integrity. For more information, visit https://www.umms.org/shore.

 

About the University of Maryland Medical System

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is an academic private health system, focused on delivering compassionate, high quality care and putting discovery and innovation into practice at the bedside. Partnering with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland, Baltimore who educate the state’s future health care professionals, UMMS is an integrated network of care, delivering 25 percent of all hospital care in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state of Maryland. UMMS puts academic medicine within reach through primary and specialty care delivered at 11 hospitals, including the flagship University of Maryland Medical Center, the System’s anchor institution in downtown Baltimore, as well as through a network of University of Maryland Urgent Care centers and more than 150 other locations in 13 counties. For more information, visit www.umms.org.

University of Maryland Shore Medical Group (UM SMG) – Primary Care at Easton and Queenstown welcome new providers to their care teams. Caitlin Gilman, CRNP, will see patients in Easton, while Christy Marciniak, CRNP, will treat patients in Queenstown.

UM SMG is an affiliate medical practice of the University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UM SRH), a member organization of the University of Maryland Medical System.

Gilman previously served as a staff nurse for UM SRH, working in Ambulatory Surgery, Surgical Services and Emergency Services. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland, and her Master of Science in Nursing from Chamberlain University.

Marciniak has over a decade of nursing experience, including emergency, cardiology and intensive care. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from University of Maryland University College in Adelphi, Maryland, and her Master of Science in Nursing from Walden University in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“We are excited to welcome Christy and Caitlin to our primary care teams in Easton and Queenstown,” said Timothy Shanahan, DO, medical director, UM SMG. “Their skills and experience will be a valuable asset to our team and to our community.”

To make an appointment with Gilman, call 410-820-4880.To make an appointment with Marciniak, call 667-343-7560.

---

 

About University of Maryland Shore Regional Health 

A member organization of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UM SRH) is the principal provider of comprehensive health care services for more than 170,000 residents of five counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore: Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot. UM SRH consists of approximately 2,000 team members, including more than 600 health care providers on the Medical Staff, who work with community partners to advance the values that are foundational to our mission: Compassion, Discovery, Excellence, Diversity and Integrity. For more information, visit https://www.umms.org/shore.

 

About the University of Maryland Medical System

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is an academic private health system, focused on delivering compassionate, high quality care and putting discovery and innovation into practice at the bedside. Partnering with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland, Baltimore who educate the state’s future health care professionals, UMMS is an integrated network of care, delivering 25 percent of all hospital care in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state of Maryland. UMMS puts academic medicine within reach through primary and specialty care delivered at 11 hospitals, including the flagship University of Maryland Medical Center, the System’s anchor institution in downtown Baltimore, as well as through a network of University of Maryland Urgent Care centers and more than 150 other locations in 13 counties. For more information, visit www.umms.org.

As many as 109,000 Marylanders could get thrown off Medicaid if Congress follows through on a proposal to impose a work requirement for the coverage, according to a new report.

The report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation comes as some lawmakers are looking for ways to cut billions in federal spending in coming years. One proposal, to require that able-bodied adults work at least 2o hours a week to receive the benefits, would trim an estimated 7% of recipients — 109,000 people in Maryland, and about 5 million nationwide, the report estimates.

“That would be a significant amount of coverage lost,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior policy officer for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “And it would have really hard consequences for people who would lose their coverage.”

The study based its estimates on work requirement language in a 2023 bill, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, which would have required Medicaid recipients to work at least 80 hours a month unless they were exempt as a student, a family caregiver or because of a disability.

The report comes as House Republicans and the Trump administration l0ok to cut billions in federal spending over the next decade. The budget resolution recently adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to cut $880 billion over 10 years.

Such reductions would likely require cuts to Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care plan for low-income residents – but exactly how those cuts would be implemented is yet to be decided. Work requirements is one of the options on the table, along with other measures to cut spending to Medicaid.

“There is this quest to find some budget cuts … Work requirements is one of the options that seems to gathering a little bit broader support than some of the others,” Hempstead said. She believes it’s important to know how work requirements could impact health care coverage, even if Congress decides not to add work requirements.

Proponents of work requirements say the policy would help move people into the workforce and help save taxpayer dollars.

The Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think-tank, said that work requirements “move millions of able-bodied adults from welfare to work,” in a post earlier this week.

“This, in turn, would save taxpayers billions of dollars, preserve resources for the truly needy, and put the Medicare and Social Security trust funds on more solid ground,” the foundation said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a February interview with CNN that the work requirements would not “cut benefits for people who rightly deserve” them.

“You don’t want able-bodied workers on a program that is intended, for example, for single mothers with two small children who is just trying to make it,” he said. “That’s what Medicaid is for – not for 29-year-old males sitting on their couches playing video games. We’re going to find those guys and were going to send them back to work.”

But opponents of work requirements say that those policies do not reflect the challenges of finding work and proving eligibility to federal officials in order to keep coverage through Medicaid.

The report focused on states that have opted to increase Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act expansion, which allows participating states to provide coverage for households that earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level income. Maryland is one of the 40 expansion states.

The report estimates that some 5 million people who live in those states could lose health care coverage if Congress imposes a work requirement to qualify for Medicaid. That would equate to about 6.9% of all 72 million people on Medicaid across the United States.

For Maryland, a work requirement could result in between 95,000 to 109,000 people losing coverage out of 1.5 million currently enrolled in Medicaid, according to the report.

The state with the largest raw number of people who could lose coverage would be California, with between 1 million to 1.2 million people affected out of the total 14 million current Medicaid recipients in the state. On the other end, between 5,000 and 6,000 of North Dakota’s 104,000 Medicaid recipients could lose coverage due to work requirements, according to the RWJF estimates.

But Hempstead also fears that work requirements will ultimately kick people off Medicaid who may still qualify for it. She said that people can often get caught up in the bureaucratic paperwork, which can be taxing for people who rely on Medicaid, as people have to prove whether they have work, are looking for work, or have a reason why they can’t work.

“Even if you accept the idea that people should have to work to get their health insurance,” she said, “what happens with work requirements is a lot of people lose coverage that are working — or are caregiving or are doing other things — and shouldn’t lose their coverage.”

Meanwhile, Hempstead noted the those who lose coverage due to work requirements would strain hospital systems, as uninsured people seek health care through other means, such as the emergency room or through charity care. That could exacerbate Maryland’s lengthy emergency room wait times, which are already some of the highest in the nation.

“There is a lot of spill-over into the health care system. As the uninsurance rate goes up and people don’t have health insurance, they try to ignore things and try to not get care. And sometimes things go away on their own and sometimes they don’t,” she said. “When things are really, really bad, they’ll go to the emergency room, where people will know that they will get treated.”

Benjamin Orr, executive director for Maryland Center on Economic Policy, said that work requirements are counterproductive and will take health insurance away from people who need it, regardless of employment.

“Our society does better when its members are healthy,” Orr said “The idea that we’re going to deny health coverage to 100,000 Marylanders or more is counterproductive to a healthy prosperous society.”

Orr also added that with talks of a looming recession, people are going to have a hard time finding jobs to fulfill work requirements to maintain health coverage. He noted that Maryland “is particularly susceptible to” layoffs in the federal government and other major institutions impacted by decisions from the Trump administration.

“It’s not a good time to be looking for a job, as we are on the cusp of a state-level recession, if not a national recession,” Orr said. “Even folks who might, otherwise in a healthy economy, be well positioned to find work may struggle to find work.”

Hempstead agrees that the work requirement logic is “backwards.”

“When people are healthy, they can work more,” she said. “It’s kind of a bad theory that you ought to be able to work in order to earn access to health care.”

---

by Danielle J. Brown, Maryland Matters
April 18, 2025

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: [email protected].

University of Maryland Shore Medical Group (UM SMG) – Nephrology recently welcomed Jamshid Amanzadeh, MD, PA, to its practice based at 5 Martin Court in Easton. UM SMG is an affiliate medical practice of the University of Maryland Shore Regional Health, a member organization of the University of Maryland Medical System. 

Dr. Amanzadeh was most recently in private practice in San Francisco and previously spent six years with Munson Nephrology Consultants in Traverse City, Michigan. His experience also includes five years as a staff physician with the VA Texas Health Care System in Dallas, Texas, during which he also served as Assistant Professor of Nephrology and Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. He is board certified in Nephrology and Internal Medicine. 

A graduate of Tehran University School of Medicine in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Amanzadeh spent four years as a primary care physician in Tehran, after which he completed residencies in Internal Medicine at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan; and also a fellowship in Nephrology at University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Society of Nephrology and has co-authored multiple articles on topics related to kidney disease and nephrology.

“We are pleased to have Dr. Amanzadeh join our nephrology team,” said Anish Hinduja, MD, Medical Director of UM SMG-Nephrology. “His experience and expertise are an excellent fit for our practice and will serve our patients very well.” 

To make an appointment with Dr. Amanzadeh, call 410-828-9823.

---

About University of Maryland Shore Regional Health 

A member organization of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UM SRH) is the principal provider of comprehensive health care services for more than 170,000 residents of five counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore: Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot. UM SRH consists of approximately 2,000 team members, including more than 600 health care providers on the Medical Staff, who work with community partners to advance the values that are foundational to our mission: Compassion, Discovery, Excellence, Diversity and Integrity. For more information, visit https://www.umms.org/shore.

About the University of Maryland Medical System

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is an academic private health system, focused on delivering compassionate, high quality care and putting discovery and innovation into practice at the bedside. Partnering with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland, Baltimore who educate the state’s future health care professionals, UMMS is an integrated network of care, delivering 25 percent of all hospital care in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state of Maryland. UMMS puts academic medicine within reach through primary and specialty care delivered at 11 hospitals, including the flagship University of Maryland Medical Center, the System’s anchor institution in downtown Baltimore, as well as through a network of University of Maryland Urgent Care centers and more than 150 other locations in 13 counties. For more information, visit www.umms.org.