With more than 42 million people enrolled in managed care programs, social workers and other human service professionals have become increasingly concerned about ethical dilemmas and issues related to client advocacy, access, regulation and consumer protection.

To address these issues, a seminar, "Social Work in the Managed Care Environment," is scheduled for Wednesday, March 26, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Faculty Commons of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall at Cornell University. Open to the public, the seminar is intended for human service professionals and students.

The keynote speaker will be Vivian Jackson, former director of the Office of Policy and Practice of the National Association of Social Workers in Washington, D.C., and consultant to IBM's managed mental health program vendor on the quality of that program's clinical performance. She will discuss ethical dilemmas, issues of access to health and mental health care and client advocacy as they relate to social work and other human service professionals. She also will consider the issues of consumer protection and regulating managed care companies.

Other speakers are Elizabeth (Lee) Moon, an Ithaca-based social work consultant who has a private clinical practice and is the former director of the Employee Assistance Program at Family and Children's Service of Ithaca, and John Kuder, Ph.D., associate professor of health economics in the Sloan Program in Health Services Administration at Cornell.

The seminar is sponsored by the new Department of Policy Analysis and Management, which will officially replace the College of Human Ecology's departments of consumer economics and housing and human service studies this July, and Cornell Cooperative Extension. This outreach and extension event has been organized by the department's baccalaureate program in social work. The mission of the new Department of Policy Analysis and Management is to focus on research, teaching and outreach in the areas of consumer, family and social welfare, health and human services in terms of policy analysis and its application through program planning, management and evaluation, said Josephine Allen, M.S.W., Ph.D., director of the Baccalaureate Social Work Program in the College of Human Ecology.

Continuing education units will be awarded for seminar attendance through the New York State Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Advance registration is $15 for professionals and $10 for students through Karen Butler at (607) 255- 8012 or <keb19@cornell.edu>. The on-site registration fee is $20 and $15 respectively.