HHS Just Deployed $700M Into Behavioral Health. Which Social-Care Capabilities Became More Valuable?
The Funding Does Not Solve Fragmentation
Good afternoon,
HHS recently announced more than $700 million in behavioral health, addiction, homelessness, and crisis-response funding, including support for Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs), 988 crisis services, recovery programs, and the new STREETS initiative focused on individuals experiencing homelessness with serious mental illness or substance use disorders.
Across the package, HHS is investing in:
crisis response
community behavioral health capacity
recovery services
homelessness response
cross-sector coordination
But as behavioral health systems expand, the ability to move people successfully between organizations becomes more important, and I’ve been thinking less about where the money is going and more about what happens after it arrives.
The funding expands behavioral health capacity. It expands crisis response capacity. It expands community-based services. It expands outreach to populations that have historically struggled to stay connected to care. What it does not automatically expand is the infrastructure required to move people successfully through those systems.
Which is why I think this $700M increases the value of organizations that support navigation, referrals, care transitions, engagement, and follow-up:
