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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced $240 million in awards to launch and expand mental health and substance use disorder services in more than 400 community health centers across the country that care for more than 10 million people. Health centers are trusted community providers and a primary source of care for individuals across the country who are uninsured, underinsured, or enrolled in Medicaid – making them well-positioned to respond to the urgent need for behavioral health services that are high quality, stigma-free, culturally competent and readily accessible. These grants will help expand access to needed care to help tackle the nation’s mental health and opioid crises – two pillars of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Unity Agenda for the nation.
HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson made the announcement today at the Mental Health America Conference in Washington, D.C. attended by thousands of advocates, clinical leaders, people with lived experience, and their families. Mental Health America’s The State of Mental Health in America 2024 report demonstrates the need for this important expansion of services, finding that the vast majority of people with a substance use disorder in the U.S. are not receiving treatment, 1 in 5 youth had at least one major depressive episode in the last year—with over half not receiving treatment, and 10 percent of adults with a mental illness are uninsured.
“Access to behavioral health care is critical for communities of color and underserved groups,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “HRSA-funded health centers have a proven record of success in reaching underserved communities. This funding expands their access to essential behavioral health services that will benefit entire communities.”
“In the Biden-Harris Administration, more people now have health care coverage than at any point in our nation’s history. With today’s announcement to establish and expand behavioral health care in hundreds of community health centers, we are further demonstrating our commitment not only to health coverage but to access to care,” said HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson. “Mental health and substance use disorder treatment are essential elements of primary care, and there should be no wrong door for families to get the behavioral health care they need.”
“Access to behavioral health care should not depend on your zip code, but for far too many American communities, getting high-quality and affordable mental health and substance use disorder care is out of reach,” said Dr, Kyu Rhee, NACHC president and CEO. “With its historic $240 million investment in behavioral health care services in 400 Community Health Centers, the Biden-Harris administration is taking a significant step toward improving equity in mental health and substance use disorder care.”
The Biden-Harris Administration has called for requiring and funding mental health and substance use disorder services in all 1,400 HRSA-supported health centers nationwide that together serve more than 31 million people. Today, health centers are only able to meet about 27% of the demand for mental health services and 6% of the substance use disorder treatment demand among their patients. Last year, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed bipartisan legislation to enact the Administration’s proposal to make behavioral health a core health center service. The Administration looks forward to further congressional action to secure this critical expansion of mental health and substance use disorder treatment as part of a multiyear extension of community health center funding.
HRSA has made expanding access to mental health and substance use disorder services a top priority. In addition to today’s announcement, recent HRSA activities include:
- For the first time, making mental health a required component of HRSA’s initiative to expand school-based community health centers;
- Funding partnerships between pediatricians and psychiatrists to allow for mental health tele-consultation, giving pediatricians real-time mental health clinical support in caring for their patients’ behavioral health needs;
- Expanding HRSA’s primary care/psychiatric care teleconsultation partnerships to schools and emergency departments;
- Training thousands of new mental health providers including psychologists, psychiatric nurses, licensed clinical social workers, and counselors;
- Securing Bipartisan Safer Communities Act funding to integrate mental health into primary care physician residency training programs;
- Supporting rural communities in creating new rural access points for opioid use disorder treatment including providing medications to treat opioid use disorder;
- Building behavioral health care services for children in rural communities;
- Providing loan repayment for unprecedented numbers of mental health providers in return for their practice in high need communities;
- Launching the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 833-TLC-MAMA to support the mental and emotional health of expectant and new moms; Training community health workers, peer support specialists and others with lived experience in supporting patients with behavioral health needs; and
- Proposing an innovative new peer-to-peer program in the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget to train young people to support one another’s mental health needs while building an early pathway into the behavioral health workforce.
