Across the U.S., approximately one in five adults—or about 60 million people—experience mental illness. Nearly 8% of U.S. adults experience substance use disorder in combination with mental illness. Adequately addressing behavioral health is critical to delivering high-quality, whole person care. Integrating behavioral health into primary care and other medical settings is a powerful lever to improve access to timely and effective care.
Over the past year, I’m proud to have worked with internal and external partners to help advance behavioral health integration, creating a more seamless, patient-centered system of care that addresses the behavioral health needs of all Californians. As the year comes to a close, we want to acknowledge and celebrate the progress we’ve made together to transform the landscape of behavioral health care and share a look ahead at what’s next.
Strengthening Behavioral Health Integration
This year, we partnered with the California Quality Collaborative to identify opportunities to strengthen behavioral health integration industry-wide, including convening stakeholders twice in 2024. These convenings helped inform the report, “Sustainable Behavioral Health Integration Financing.” Within, we were proud to have many of Blue Shield of California’s policies included as best practices, and the report also outlines recommendations for industry alignment on sustainable financing.
Driving Collaborative Conversations
Industry Initiatives recognizes that a component of driving industry-wide progress is to create opportunities for connection and trust-building. To create a more integrated landscape, our team organized stakeholder convenings throughout 2024 to bring together diverse groups of leaders. At our April stakeholder dinner, the enthusiasm and commitment demonstrated by attendees underscored the growing recognition of the need for collaboration to achieve scalable solutions. Providers shared powerful stories of success with integrated care models highlighting how clinics have adopted these approaches and improved access to mental health care among people of color. An additional result of this convening was a collaborative op-ed designed to help drive awareness of the benefits of an integrated approach that shares both the perspectives of primary care and behavioral health care. This story, authored by Jennifer Christian-Herman, PhD, Vice President of Blue Shield of California’s Clinical Strategy and Programs, and Brian Sandoval, PsyD, Clinical Advisor at Collaborative Family Healthcare Association, was published in Behavioral Health News.
We also worked with diverse groups of stakeholders to educate the industry, including hosting a webinar, “Bridging the Gap on Behavioral Health: Advancing Whole-Person Care Through Integration” that brought together experts from across health care to discuss barriers to achieving behavioral health integration, and how to scale and sustain it in California.
Expanding the Vision
As we look to the future, we will continue to lean into meaningful, sustainable momentum. Our priorities include working alongside the CQC, payers, and other stakeholders to implement the findings of the CQC report and build investment in behavioral health integration.
We also remain committed to data sharing initiatives that support collaboration across integrated care teams, such as California’s Data Exchange Framework (DxF). The DxF facilitates the secure and appropriate exchange of health information, giving providers a clear understanding of a patient’s full health history and the information needed to provide safe and effective whole-person care. In 2025, we will continue to partner with organizations such as Connecting for Better Health to advocate for the policies, funding, and accountability necessary for the success of robust statewide data sharing.
At the heart of our work is a commitment to building trust and fostering collaboration in an often-fragmented healthcare ecosystem. As a nonprofit health plan, we’re uniquely positioned to champion mission-driven, co-opetitive initiatives that benefit all stakeholders—providers, payers, and most importantly, patients. Together, we’re making strides toward a healthcare system that works better for everyone, and look forward to continuing this essential work in 2025 and beyond.
