Mailing Address

Oregon Center of Excellence for Assertive Community Treatment

Options for Southern Oregon

1215 SW ‘G’ Street

Grants Pass, Oregon 97526

OCEACT Leadership

Heidi Herinckx

Heidi Herinckx

Senior Director of Centers of Excellence (OCEACT & OSECE)

Email: hherinckx@optionsonline.org
Phone: 541-507-7125

Heidi Herinckx joined Options for Southern Oregon in July 2013 and serves as the Director for Research and Evaluation as well as the Director of Centers of Excellence (OCEACT & OSECE). Heidi has over 20 years experience helping mental health programs implement and evaluate evidence based practices.

Prior to joining Options, Heidi was a mental health services researcher at the Regional Research Institute at Portland State University for 18 years. Heidi has worked with a number of mental health and social service agencies in Oregon and Washington with the primary goal of advancing and improving mental health care and community-based services. Heidi’s areas of expertise include Assertive Community Treatment, Strengths case management, supported employment, the Matrix model for methamphetamine addiction, mental health court and therapeutic jurisprudence, peer providers and person-centered service design.

Over the past 20 years, Heidi has implemented and evaluated ACT programs in Oregon and Washington. Heidi was the project manager for this randomized clinical trial that compared the effectiveness of consumer providers of ACT, non-consumer providers of ACT, and “ mental health services as usual.” From 2004 through 2008, Heidi helped implement and evaluate the COMET program in Clark County Washington and the MERIT program in Josephine County Oregon.  The COMET Program was an ACT team that combined the MATRIX model to treat individuals with serious mental illness and a co-occurring methamphetamine addiction.

Asia Gray

Asia Gray

Director of OCEACT

Email: agray@optionsonline.org
Phone: 541-450-5483

Asia is an Oregon native, born and raised in the Portland area. Currently, she lives in St Helens Oregon with her partner Len and 3 of their 4 children. Their oldest daughter lives with her mom.

Asia returned to school in her twenties as a nontraditional student, and received a Ford Restart scholarship. She completed her Masters degree at Portland State University in 2013. Her background is working in rural community mental health, and she has been in several roles across the continuum of care for folks living with serious mental illness. In 2017, Asia implemented a high fidelity ACT team and served as team lead. Asia brings a wealth of knowledge, skills, and first-hand expertise in ACT model implementation. Most recently, along with all OCEACT staff, Asia has completed the training to be a Certified Personal Medicine Coach through Pat Deegan and Associates. Asia is also partnering with them to provide feedback on their newly developed curriculum on medication empowerment and the personal decision making process involved in choosing to take psychiatric medications. She is passionate about social justice, especially health equity, and environmental stewardship.

Asia enjoys being in the woods, gardening and learning about plants, reading and listening to audio books, walking and hiking, and finding secret swimming holes and beautiful places near rivers and creeks.

OCEACT Staff

Christina Lindsey

Christina Lindsey

Statewide Trainer

Email: clindsey@optionsonline.org
Phone: 541-613-6766

Christina Lindsey graduated from The University of Oregon in 2003, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. She then spent several years in various customer service positions before landing on an ACT Team in Arizona. There, Christina became very passionate about adult mental health, recovery, and the ACT model in particular. After a year and half in Arizona, Christina followed her husband back to Oregon and secured a place as the Peer Support Specialist for the Laurel Hill Center ACT Team. Christina was with Laurel Hill for four years and is excited for new experiences as a Statewide Trainer with OCEACT.

Christina is a self-professed “nerd” who enjoys science fiction, anime, and comic books. She also enjoys crafting, knitting, and gardening. Christina and her husband like to spend time together playing video games, bike riding, and analyzing the plots of television shows.

Ben Yoder

Ben Yoder

Statewide Trainer

Email: byoder@optionsonline.org 
Phone: 541-600-6102

Ben Yoder is a graduate of The University of Oregon, long-time Oregon resident, and advocate for the SPMI population. He spent his first few years post-graduation working on campus for environmental concerns and shortly thereafter transitioned into a recovery specialist position with The Laurel Hill Center. There, he studied under Mary Alice Brown, PhD., well known advocate for the rights of the under-served and former president of USPRA. After a 15 year tenure and development of the Laurel Hill ACT program, Ben transitioned to the position of statewide trainer with OCEACT. He is currently conducting program reviews and providing technical assistance and support to ACT teams across the state

Ben serves the community in his free time as president and board member of a local HOA and supports the local efforts of elementary and middle schools. When he is not playing any variety of music instrument or spending time with his Boston Terrier, he enjoys hiking, kayaking, snorkeling rivers and lakes, biking, attempting to surf, and playing sports with his two sons, who are 9 and 12. Kristi is Ben’s long-time partner and she works as an account rep. for a successful organic produce company, distributing produce throughout the western states. They met at the Urban Farm at the University of Oregon and continue to share strong values in fair trade, gardening, and the therapeutic value of helping something grow.

Shane Semin

Shane Semin

Statewide Trainer

Email: ssemin@optionsonline.org
Phone: 541-295-5118

Shane has been a Statewide Trainer for OCEACT since 2017. Shane grew up in Ashland, Oregon and feels lucky to be a 34 year resident of Southern Oregon. Shane experienced adversity in his teens and early 20’s and was fortunate enough to find recovery at 22 years old. Shane started to find different opportunities for himself and as a young man, Shane found himself working manual labor, mostly having to do with production and Mill work. After years of manual labor work, Shane was able to use the wisdom of his father and “use the thing on his shoulders for something other than a hat rack”. Shane returned to school in his Mid 20’s and he was determined to become a long term residential Alcohol and Drug counselor. Upon graduation, he was able to secure one of only two local positions that fit this bill. Shane worked 7 plus years in a residential setting, providing addictions counseling  to adult males who could bring one child in to residence and gain substance abuse treatment along with parenting skills.  Shane made another change and went into outpatient Opiate replacement therapy. After four years working with the opiate dependent population, he found himself with another opportunity for change and worked on the Access to Recovery Grant with Jackson County Mental Health. When this grant came to an end, the agency was ready to start an Assertive Community Treatment team. Shane worked on the Jackson County Mental Health ACT team as the Substance Abuse Specialist for nearly 4 years.

Cathy Bozarth

Cathy Bozarth

Statewide Trainer

Email: cbozarth@optionsonline.org
Phone: 541-450-5044

Cathy earned her Master of Arts in Counseling: Clinical Mental Health from Adams State University in Colorado and is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Nationally Certified Counselor. Cathy has over seventeen years’ experience working in various community mental health service settings. Cathy has previous work experience to include working in the inpatient treatment setting, with the mobile crisis outreach team, as part of an outpatient leadership team, and as part of an ACT team.

 

Liz Middleton

Liz Middleton

Statewide Trainer

Email: lmiddleton@optionsonline.org 
Phone: 541-450-5797

Liz has worked in community mental health in a variety of roles both clinical and supervisory for nearly thirty years. As a QMHP, Liz has provided care in a variety of settings: recovery-oriented partial care, prison, dual-disorder inpatient, SRTF, low-barrier transitional housing and probation. Liz has Team Lead experience in two ACT programs. The most recent has been with Cascadia Behavioral Health Forensic Act Team since inception in 2015 until January 2022.

Liz has received a wealth of knowledge from the following resources: participants, colleagues, supervisors, continuing education trainings, every OCEACT conference and from Temple University School of Social Work. Liz achieved a BSW (Stockton University) and MSW (Temple University) and has been an Oregon LCSW since 2007. Liz is also a proud Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner since 2017.

Self-care activities include hiking, cycling, yoga, reading, thrifting and spending time with friends both two and four-legged. Currently, there are three elder Chihuahua mixes and three playful felines ruling the home in Portland.

Alyssa Kerlinger

Alyssa Kerlinger

Research Associate

Email: akerlinger@optionsonline.org
Phone: 541-450-5233

Alyssa has been working for the Oregon Center of Excellence for Assertive Community Treatment since 2017.  She has conducted statewide program evaluations on the effectiveness of ACT and co-authored two papers on the Implementation of ACT in Oregon and ACT Collaboration with Community Medical Providers. Alyssa manages the Oregon ACT Database, collecting and analyzing quarterly ACT outcome reports for the Oregon Health Authority.

Alyssa has a bachelor degree in Sociology and certificates in Nonprofit Management and Regional Studies and Applied Social Research from Southern Oregon University. Alyssa has partnered on several research projects including Southern Oregon University Research Center’s Student Retention Study, Jackson County Health and Human Services’ Standardized Tobacco Assessment for Retail Settings, as well as co-authoring a paper on Food Insecurity and Food Values Among America’s Poor. Alyssa started her career after graduation at Jackson County Mental Health as a Supported Education Specialist, assisting individuals in overcoming barriers to achieve their education goals.

Alyssa enjoys traveling, reading a good book, tending to her indoor jungle of plants, and camping or rafting with her husband and two dogs.