Who We Are
The Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy is dedicated to changing the way people with mental health and substance use disorders get the help they need. For too long behavioral health care has been separated from general medical care. This division between the mind and the body is an historical anomaly that contributes to stigma, discrimination, and poor care. By creating policy solutions that bring behavioral health and physical health back together, the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy works to help create a healthier America.
Our Mission
The mission of the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy is to find policy solutions that integrate behavioral health care into overall health care so that people with mental illnesses and substance use disorders get the help they need.
The Center began as Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems - a major health policy project funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts to change the way that America provides care for people with alcohol problems. Within five years, Ensuring Solutions:
- Helped businesses nationwide to demand better alcohol-related services from their health plans. Health plans held to these new standards increased the identification of patients with alcohol problems by more than 15 percent in one year, ensuring treatment for tens of thousands of additional patients.
- Convinced the American Medical Association and the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services to create new billing codes that encourage primary care physicians to identify and treat people with substance use disorders.
- Developed new research-based standards for the identification and treatment of substance use disorders. These standards were endorsed by the National Quality Forum in 2007.
- Created an online technical assistance program to help repeal insurance laws that discourage emergency room doctors from identifying patients with alcohol-related problems. Since 2002, this resource has helped to repeal laws in nine states and the District of Columbia.
Key Program Areas
National Health Care Reform: The Center leads a collaborative of 25 mental health and substance use treatment and prevention organizations to inform the national debate about how to improve America's health care.
Behavioral Health Screening and Brief Intervention: The Center works with employers, health plans, employee assistance programs, and other health systems to improve the early identification and treatment of depression, addiction, and other behavioral health problems.
Solving Behavioral Health Problems: The Center develops innovative solutions to difficult national behavioral health problems. Current projects include integrating behavioral health into electronic health records, developing new visions for federal behavioral health agencies, and creating nation-wide performance standards for health plans and employee assistance programs.
Health Care Financing: The Center brings together insurers and health care providers to develop financial incentives for improved treatment access and quality of care.
Contact Us
Center for Health Policy Research
2121 K St., NW, Suite 210
Department of Health Policy
School of Public Health and Health Services
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20006
Phone: (202) 994-4303
Fax: (202) 296-0025
Email: info@integratedbehavorialhealth.org
Web site: Center for Integrated Behavioral Health
Director: Eric Goplerud, Ph.D