MEADOWS MENTAL HEALTH POLICY INSTITUTE

The Hackett Center for Mental Health:serving Harris County and the Greater Gulf Coast area of Texas, THE HACKETT CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH puts policy into practice by identifying solutions to pressing behavioral health challenges for families and their children and supporting the implementation of best practices among systems, organizations, and policymakers. Through reports like Knowledge for Impact: Documenting Lived Experience of Behavioral Health in Harris County, it sheds light on critical barriers to care, equipping policymakers and community leaders with insights to drive meaningful change. The Hackett Centers commitment to womens behavioral health was demonstrated through its Maternal Mental Health Roundtables and the "With Women in Mind" webinar series, fostering essential conversations and partnerships that will shape future behavioral health initiatives. Additionally, through Brain Builders, it expanded its efforts to support early relational health, equipping caregivers with the tools to nurture strong, healthy brain development in young children laying the foundation for lifelong mental well-being. The Trauma and Grief (TAG) Center located at The Hackett Center for Mental Health, works to raise the standard of care and increase access to best-practice care among children and adolescents who have experienced trauma and/or loss through the development of novel treatments and ensuring that those treatments work for different populations of youth in the Greater Houston area, across Texas, and throughout the United States. In 2024, the TAG Center expanded its efforts for youth exposed to trauma and bereavement, training 639 clinicians that served more than 800 youth.

Health & Public Safety: The Meadows Institute advances reforms to ensure that from the moment a person reaches out for help until the moment they arrive at a safe place for treatment, they receive the right level of care from a trained professional. This approach keeps people experiencing behavioral health emergencies from making unnecessary trips to emergency departments or being arrested, while supporting the mental health of the courageous law enforcement officers who protect and serve our communities. In its third year of operation, the Texas Law Enforcement Peer Network (TLEPN), a partnership between the Meadows Institute and the Caruth Police Institute, connected police officers in all 254 Texas counties with mental health services and resources. Additionally, the Texas Blue Chip Program, which provides essential no-cost clinical resources to promote officer well-being, expanded statewide. As of December 2024, more than 1,500 blue chips across Texas had been distributed to police officers seeking care.

Policy: The Meadows Institutes policy team educates and builds relationships with lawmakers in the Texas Legislature and Washington, D.C., to ensure that mental health remains a bipartisan priority. In 2024, the Meadows Institute helped advance commonsense solutions to strengthen behavioral health care statewide and nationally. The Meadows Institute helped local communities access the record $11.68 billion the 88th Texas Legislature dedicated to behavioral health care, while preparing for the 89th Legislative Session in 2025. In addition, Congress passed 100% of the Meadows Institutes federal behavioral health funding priorities for FY25, investing $8.1 billion, including $57 million for behavioral health integration efforts.

Data: The Meadows Institutes research and data analytics team accelerates progress using cutting-edge methodologies and projections to answer questions that are essential to move mental health policies forward, while supporting the Meadows Institutes program evaluations and needs assessments with high-quality data analytics.

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