Jennifer Donahue, Delaware Office of the Child Advocate, testifies before the HELP Committee (Jennifer Perry to her right) ____________________________________________________________ Some seasoned advocates say legislators are influenced by stories while their staffs are swayed by data. There was some of both at the April 11 hearing on the draft Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 of the U.S. Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee but it was the personal stories that...

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) plans to award up to 75 grants to rural communities as part of a new Rural Communities Opioid Response (Planning) (RCORP) initiative in FY 18. Successful awardees will receive up to $200,000 for one-year to develop plans to implement opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery interventions designed to reduce opioid overdoses among rural populations. The initiative will focus...

Under a new law that took effect Sept. 1, insurance companies may not cover mental health and substance abuse care differently than they cover medical care. [For more on this story by Marissa Evans & Todd Wiseman, go to https://www.texastribune.org/2017/09/27/texans-get-help-reaping-mental-health-insurance-benefits/ ] Illustration by John Jordan

Seanna Crosbie, chair of the Trauma-Informed Care Consortium of Central Texas (TICC) , laments that Texas is too often in the national spotlight for less than positive reasons—one example being its ranking next to the bottom among in states in spending on mental health services—and not often enough for its achievements. As she leads the TICC, she envisions a statewide collaboration across diverse sectors—including health, education, law enforcement—that turns around some of the most...