Historically, behavioral health systems underserve many racial and ethnic underrepresented communities nationwide and continue to do so today. This impacts people, their families, and the broader communities in King County who often find that the current behavioral healthcare options do not fit their cultural needs, so they remain either un- or under-served by available mental health, substance use and wellness services.
Introducing Community-Driven Behavioral Health to King County
What is Community-Driven Behavioral Health? It is targeted, community-initiated, behavioral health-related services or programs designed by community and for community to address particular cultural or ethnic communities’ behavioral health needs. DCHS’s community-driven behavioral health grants reflect an approach employed around the world that has proven successful in improving equity, access, and behavioral health and wellbeing. In King County, MIDD sales tax investments are used by communities to support new and existing, under- or un-funded efforts to address the mental health and wellness needs within the communities.
MIDD is part of King County’s efforts to address the growing behavioral health need in a variety of ways. It is made up of 52 initiatives across five focus areas: Crisis Diversion (CD), Prevention & Early Intervention (PRI), Recovery & Re-Entry (RR), Systems Improvement (SI), and Therapeutic Courts (TX).
King County introduced Community-Driven Behavioral Health Grants (CDBHG) in 2017 in the MIDD 2 Implementation Plan, to advance a MIDD goal of increasing culturally appropriate and trauma-informed behavioral health services. The initiative provides resources for community organizations to propose projects and receive funding to address self-identified community needs.
In short, these investments provide funding to community organizations to develop and implement programs that work best for the community they serve. King County first awarded CDBHG to community-based organizations to provide behavioral health services in 2020. King County’s Behavioral Health & Recovery Division (BHRD) has since released two more requests for proposals (RFPs), providing an estimated $3 million in funding to 32 organizations across the county over the last four years. Currently, under the CDBHG (SI-01) initiative, eight organizations receive funding to develop and implement program models that support behavioral health needs across several communities and populations in King County. However, requiring small agencies to depend on short-term, small grants, makes it difficult to sustain much needed capacity in underserved communities. As such, and to further advance equity, BHRD identified funding from an aligned MIDD initiative, PRI-11C, to continue support of projects previously funded in 2021-2022 through the end of MIDD 2 implementation in 2024.
Community-Driven Approaches Have Been Effective Around the Globe
Governments around the world have seen decades of positive impacts resulting from community-driven behavioral health supports. While King County invests in Community-Driven Behavioral Health Grants through MIDD, this is hardly the first time the concept has been explored globally. Many countries around the world, including the United States, have developed grants just like these to fill the gap created by current healthcare systems.
In addition, a few key locations have built a framework to implement community-driven behavioral healthcare to complement their current healthcare systems. The Biden Administration designated $74.4 billion to small community-driven behavioral health grants in November of 2023, and the Council of State Governments is implementing the same kind of culturally specific small community grants at a lower level of government in the US as well.
Australia has perhaps the most robust mental health and wellbeing policy plan of any single country in the world following 16 years of implementation, studies, evaluations, and revisions. In the summer of 2023, the Australian parliament introduced the first ever Wellbeing Framework entitled ‘Measuring What Matters’, which aims to collect the overall wellbeing of a given Aussie, taking a whole person approach to mental wellbeing that is reminiscent of community-driven behavioral health program approaches.
Engaging with Community: The Behavioral Health Collaborative in King County
In 2023, MIDD launched the MIDD Community-Owned Behavioral Health Collaborative to better support and connect with the community-driven contracted organizations. The group of organizations receiving 2021-22 Community Driven Behavioral Health Grants funding was also invited to participate. The collaborative is intended to provide capacity building support to participating organizations and provide a space for mutual education between publicly- funded and community-based providers to elevate BHRD’s focus on equity within behavioral health programming. The Collaborative also intends to bolster the voices of community-owned behavioral health providers by making space for them to provide recommendations in support of equitable policy development and future funding recommendations to the MIDD Advisory Committee and DCHS team.
Below is a list of organizations participating in the collaborative:
| Choose 180 Communidad Congolese Integration Network Diaspora Family Healing Network Eritrean Association in Greater Seattle Hope for Homies Indian American Community Services Korean Community Service Center Khmer Community of Seattle King County Neighborcare Health Neighborhood House | Real Escape from the Sex Trade Resilient in Sustaining Empowerment Somali Health Board Ukrainian Community Center of WA Unified Outreach Unkitawa UTOPIA Vietnamese Health Board Wakulima Yoga Behind Bars |
Meet the DCHS Team bringing Community-Driven Behavioral Health Grants to King County
Kari Taylor, CDBHG Performance Measurement Evaluator
I am excited about the Community Driven Behavioral Health Grants because they aim to elevate lived experience rather than taking traditional, prescriptive approaches to addressing behavioral health system challenges. Community-driven behavioral health grants give power back to community by supporting local community organizations to address the needs that they see, in a way that is culturally and linguistically responsive to their community. This approach is applying equity in practice and can change the way that everyone involved thinks about and interacts with behavioral healthcare. For me, it’s about applying my own lived experiences to my work by getting creative with data collection and advocating for more qualitative analysis that allows for a more complete story about the program and its impact.
Ziying Hu, MIDD Rural Behavioral Health Program Manager
The Community Driven Behavioral Health and the Rural Behavioral Health Grants are significant resources to provide innovative, culturally, and linguistically behavioral health services among ethnic and cultural minority communities who have been historically unserved or underserved. I hold this aspect of work very dearly to my heart because of my lived experience as part of the AAPI community. I want to contribute and propose solutions to push for more equitable services.
Nikki Nguyen, MIDD Community Partnerships Program Manager
Being a BIPOC immigrant woman, I have witnessed the multiple barriers and challenges the BIPOC and marginalized communities, including my parents and friends, face in accessing relevant behavioral health services. I am thrilled to be a part of and able to support the work of King County BHRD to advance equity by funding community organizations to implement relevant behavioral services and reach communities that need these services most. This work is just the beginning and I hope we can continue to expand our support to provide equitable services for all King County residents.
Be sure to check out the next DCHS blog post in the MIDD CDBHG series for more information!
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