Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission
Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission
Supporting the Georgia Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission
The state legislature created the Georgia Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission in 2019 to develop long-range recommendations to reform Georgia’s behavioral health system. Some of the commission’s recommendations were adopted by the legislature in the state’s 2022 Mental Health Parity Act (HB 1013).
Recognizing the Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health’s long-term infrastructure and programmatic support for the state’s behavioral health system of care, the Georgia Health Policy Center continues to supply research capacity and meeting support for four of the commission’s subcommittees working on child and adolescent behavioral health care, hospital and short-term care, the behavioral health workforce, and mental health courts and corrections. Specific research topics have included documenting the current behavioral health system and its financing structures and conducting state scans on specific policy topics including workforce, crisis admissions, and continuum of care. An end-of-year report summarizes subcommittee and full commission meeting activities, including policy recommendations from presentations given by interagency partners, behavioral health advocates, subject matter experts, and community members.