SAMHSA Region VII 601 E. 12th Street Suite S1801 Kansas City, MO 64106 816-426-5291 Kimberly.Nelson@samhsa.hhs.gov
Kimberly Nelson is the Regional Administrator serving Region 7: Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska. Ms. Nelson is a licensed addictions counselor with a master’s degree in public administration and worked in the behavioral health care field since 1992. Ms. Nelson has worked in health care for all of her professional career, primarily in the area of behavioral health as an addictions and managed care contract professional. Ms. Nelson’s clinical work was early in her career and mainly focused on addiction services, initially in community-based settings in women’s and children’s residential programs in Kansas. She then moved into executive leadership roles primarily. Ms. Nelson provided leadership as program director in programs with criminal justice clients in community-based residential and outpatient settings, as well as with prison-based therapeutic communities.
Later, Ms. Nelson was recruited to the state of Kansas with the Addiction and Prevention Services Division as the Medicaid Coordinator. As the liaison between the behavioral health and Medicaid divisions, her primary responsibility was to ensure Medicaid policy was aligned with the state goals for addiction services. This was accomplished via a pre-paid inpatient health plan; part of our 1915 b/c managed care waiver for behavioral health. Ms. Nelson was part of the team that wrote the waiver, request for proposals, awarded the contract and then led the team that managed the contractor for the five years of this waiver.
As the state administration changed, after a brief time as the state’s Substance Abuse Authority, in continuing roles of increasing responsibility, Ms. Nelson moved into the role of Director of Managed Care for the Behavioral Health and Disabilities division of the Kansas Department on Aging and Disability Services, helping to implement a statewide comprehensive integrated managed care system in 2012 under an 1115 demonstration waiver that covered all services; including physical health, behavioral health, and long term services and supports. Ms. Nelson shared in the management of this contract, leading the team that managed the aspects of this contract dedicated to behavioral health and long term services and supports in the state of Kansas. During her tenure with the state of Kansas, Ms. Nelson was part of the team that got the state plan amendment approved by CMS for implementation of Health Homes for those with severe mental illness. In her position of Vice President of Marketing and New Business Development for a large integrated health services provider in Kansas, prior to becoming the Region VII Administrator, Ms. Nelson lead the team that launched the Health Home program.
Ms. Nelson is a licensed addictions counselor and earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and her master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Kansas.
Assistant Regional Administrator, Region 7 Kimberly Reynolds, M.A. Kimberly.Reynolds@samhsa.hhs.gov
Kim holds a Master's degrees in Public Administration and Adult Education. She began her career in direct services at a community mental health center in Oklahoma, then managed the homeless department of a Community Action Agency. On three occasions, she has worked for the State of Kansas in their Medicaid Waiver and Behavioral Health Services divisions. In that capacity, she oversaw housing, homeless, and aging programs for seriously mentally ill adults, and supervised a team of licensing and quality assurance behavioral health and waiver staff. Most recently, she was the Single State Authority (SSA) for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Prevention & Treatment, as well as the State Opioid Treatment Authority (SOTA), and oversaw KS' Block Grant and Opioid State Targeted Response grant programs. She has also worked in several academic departments at the University of Kansas, managing SAMHSA and state-funded behavioral health research and evaluation projects, and, most recently, oversaw the university's SAMHSA-funded suicide prevention program. A grant reviewer for NIMH since 2002 and SAMHSA since 2006, Kim is also an experienced grant writer and grants manager.
Last Updated: 04/24/2020