PACEs Coalition Meeting

Stephen Jenkins, Unity Health

Stephen Jenkins is a licensed clinical social worker, substance use counselor, and behavioral health leader with extensive experience in adolescent mental health and substance use treatment. Currently, Stephen serves as program director at Unity Health in Searcy, Arkansas, where he oversees both the acute adolescent psychiatric unit and the residential substance use treatment program.

Stephen has played a lead role in developing an adolescent residential substance use facility, which will be the first in Arkansas to accept Medicaid. Since 2018, he has also worked as a peer support specialist and case manager in Missouri, a substance use counselor at a methadone clinic, and has provided outpatient, school-based therapy for children and adolescents.

With advanced training in EMDR, IFS, Brainspotting, and motivational interviewing, Stephen is passionate about expanding access to recovery-focused services for youth and families.

Kaila Hall is the director of AFMC's community resources department. She earned a Master of Science degree in children and family studies from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2015 and spent five years at Arkansas Children's Hospital, where she worked as a family service assistant supporting families experiencing a medical crisis.

She joined AFMC in 2017 to implement and oversee a family engagement program focused on preventing foster care entry. Since then, Kaila has led the development and oversight of several statewide initiatives, including Arkansas's Mental Health and Addiction Support Helpline, the My Arkansas Helpline for the Health Insurance Marketplace, the Provider-Led Arkansas Shared Savings Entity Helpline, and the Arkansas Works Helpline. Kaila also has experience overseeing federal grants, such as the statewide adoption records program, HRSA Primary Care Training Enhancement, and the Rural Communities Opioid Response Planning and Implementation programs, as well as the SAMHSA AWARE and DOJ Victims of Crime grants. In her current role, she oversees multiple helplines, a 988 Crisis Center, and federal grants addressing youth mental health. Kaila also manages AFMC's Trauma-Informed PACEs Program, which encompasses trauma-informed care, resilience, and mental health first aid training, and the annual ACEs & Resilience Summit. Kaila is deeply passionate about serving people and supporting Arkansas’s most vulnerable populations in both her professional and personal life.