In Memoriam

Amanda Foley-Byard

Dr. Amanda Foley-Byard

Behavioral Health Professional, Peer Recovery Center of Excellence

Dr. Amanda Foley-Byard is founder and CEO of the Center for Healing & Transformation, an organization dedicated to supporting and empowering providers and community leaders in addressing public and behavioral health crises. She also currently serves as a National Subject Matter Expert, Trainer and Consultant for both the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence and the Opioid Response Network.

Experience

Prior to founding CHT, Dr. Foley-Byard served in the Department for Behavioral Health as a key member of the Kentucky Opioid Response Effort team where she worked to increase access to evidence-based prevention, treatment, and recovery services throughout the state. In this role, she developed and oversaw treatment initiatives funded by the STR and SOR federal grants, providing implementation support, training, and project management to providers in various settings including hospital bridge clinics and service line expansion, FQHCs, justice settings, addiction treatment, and within the child welfare system. Additional highlights from her work with KORE include leading development of Kentucky’s Quick Response Team initiative, the Kentucky Integrated Behavioral Healthcare initiative, the MOUD Access Expansion initiative, a significant expansion of DCBS START, TAP, and KSTEP programs for pregnant and parenting women and families, Kentucky’s first Mobile OUD & SUD Treatment & Recovery Services initiative, and worked toward building a state model for integrative treatment for individuals impacted by SUD and Co-Occurring Psychiatric Disorders.

Dr. Foley-Byard received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in Educational and Community-Based Participatory Action Research, a paradigm committed to the co-facilitation of the research process in democratic partnership with the community experiencing oppression to explicitly bring about change as identified by the community. She is also a clinician with expertise in trauma-informed care, experiential therapy and psychodrama for individuals impacted by substance-related disorders and co-occurring psychiatric conditions.