The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) provides grants to states through two types of block grants to support community mental health and substance use disorder prevention/treatment. Grants are awarded to state mental health agencies and single state agencies. As a follow up to the federal agency roundtable we hosted in September on the opioid crisis, we learned that the application for the 2018-2019 grants specifically states that mental health agencies:
May wish to develop and support partnerships and programs to help address social determinants of health and advance overall health equity. For instance, some organizations have established medical-legal partnerships to assist persons with mental and substance use disorders in meeting their housing, employment, and education needs.
If your organization’s medical-legal partnership addresses mental health and/or substance use disorders and an agency in your state was awarded either of these grants, this is a great opportunity to reach out, share what your partnership is doing, and discuss ways to collaborate.