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Behavioral Health

Behavioral health describes the connection between a person’s behaviors and the health and well-being of the body and mind. Behavioral health is a vital component of overall health and wellness. Raising awareness and reducing stigma around mental health and substance is key to building a resilient and thriving community. The vision is to ensure that all Linn-Benton-Lincoln residents have equitable access to behavioral health support and treatments.

The long-term vision of these goals is to ensure that all Linn-Benton-Lincoln residents have equitable access to behavioral health support and treatments.

Goals

  • Use a person-centered, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed approach to behavioral health promotion and destigmatization through education, communication, and engagement. 
  • Increase access to responsive, transformative behavioral health services and supports that are culturally and linguistically appropriate. 
  • Develop and improve a comprehensive continuum of care that integrates regional behavioral health systems and community-based organizations (CBOs) using a person-centered and community-focused approach. 
Close-up of psychiatrist hands in those of patient

Goal 1: Build community resilience

Community resilience is the ability of a community to adapt and maintain their well-being when faced with hardship. This goal uses education, communication, and engagement to destigmatize behavioral health and promote resilience. Three key characteristics of these strategies are: 

  • person-centered—care that focuses on a person and their needs and circumstances, instead of a condition, disability, or bias (prejudice or prejudgment) that may be present
  • culturally responsive—understanding and adapting to a person’s culture
  • trauma-informed—care that recognizes the impact of trauma (an event that causes intense stress and has a lasting effect) on a person’s life and well-being

Goal 1 strategies

  1. Connect physical, emotional, and social health and well-being by supporting individual and community tools that promote resilience and healthy coping.
  2. Encourage help-seeking by reducing barriers to access through outreach to specific populations (e.g., youth, veterans, tribal, and others) 
  3. Create population-specific educational resources that increase community awareness of existing behavioral health services and destigmatize behavioral health and wellness.

Goal 2: Grow a healthy workforce

This goal focuses on increasing access to behavioral health services and support for the people who serve the community. This goal identifies four aspects of healthy workers: 

  • Responsive—the ability to understand and adapt as needed 
  • Transformative—making a lasting, positive change 
  • Culturally appropriate—respecting and responding to a person’s cultural heritage, which can include ethnicity or religion 
  • Linguistically appropriate—respecting and responding to a person’s need to interact in their language

Goal 2 strategies

  1. Grow and maintain a healthy behavioral health provider workforce by addressing retention strategies, burnout, and recruitment. Example: For retention and recruitment, support career development opportunities such as internships, mentorships, and culturally specific peer supports.
  2. Reduce barriers to access to care including the physical barriers of transportation, rural and tribal needs, and culturally appropriate and gender-affirming treatment options.
  3. Create learning opportunities for providers that increase awareness around cultural competence and the unique behavioral health needs of communities that have been economically and socially marginalized.

Goal 3: Improve care coordination

This goal focuses first on the need to develop a continuum of care, a system of services that meet the varying needs of people throughout their lifespan. A comprehensive continuum of care means that all people can receive the right care at the right time from the right provider.

This goal focuses on two types of approaches: 

  1. Person-centered—care that focuses on a person and their needs and circumstances, instead of a condition, disability, or bias (prejudice or prejudgment) that may be present
  2. Community-focused—care that centers on the needs, environment, and circumstances of a community

Goal 3 strategies

  1. Create spaces to engage in collaborative discussions for relationship-building across systems.
  2. Identify and address insurance barriers to behavioral healthcare access.
  3. Streamline the client experience across organizations by establishing a flexible data collection and communication system adaptable to different organizational requirements, limitations, and needs.

What we’re measuring:

We’re evaluating access to mental health and substance use services, workforce capacity, and efforts to reduce stigma and improve outcomes for all residents.

Why it matters:

Improving behavioral health services and destigmatizing mental health care are essential to fostering resilient and thriving communities.

Key Progress measures:

  • Increase in the number of behavioral health providers per capita.
  • Reduction in the rates of deaths related to substance use and untreated mental health conditions.
  • Enhanced community awareness and use of behavioral health resources, especially among youth and marginalized populations