The ability to exchange patient information has historically been a major obstacle to collaboration and coordination across providers. Several communities in California are showing that they can overcome it.

Collecting and analyzing community-level data across providers and payers is essential to designing effective behavioral health and substance abuse interventions, as well as to building shared accountability for improving population health.

Gaps in access to behavioral healthcare persist for communities of color and other marginalized populations in California due to stigma, cost, and an absence of providers and care models that are linguistically and culturally relevant. Across California, communities are mobilizing to advocate for environments that support positive mental health.

Community health centers are an important hub for primary care, mental health and substance use treatment for low-income patients. Over the last decade, there has been significant growth in their capacity to deliver behavioral healthcare services that will likely continue as new policy opportunities drive ongoing integration and collaboration in local communities.

Delivering integrated care requires primary care, mental health, and substance use providers to build new capacities in their own fields, and work to strengthen their partnerships with each other. In many communities, innovative programs and new practices are being implemented to support a workforce geared toward integration..

Improving the way that mental health and substance abuse conditions are treated is a goal that has risen to the top of the policy agenda here in California, and nationally, within the last decade. Local communities are taking advantage of new policy opportunities to create more effective services and systems of support for patients with behavioral healthcare needs.