42 U.S.C. § 290aa–0 — National Mental Health and Substance Use Policy Laboratory

(a) Creating the Laboratory. This section creates the National Mental Health and Substance Use Policy Laboratory inside the Administration. (b) Responsibilities. The Laboratory must continue the work the old Office of Policy, Planning, and Innovation used to do before December 13, 2016. It must identify, coordinate, and help carry out policy changes that could significantly affect mental health, mental illness, recovery support, and substance use disorder prevention and treatment. It must work with the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality to gather information from grantees, so it can evaluate and share evidence-based practices and service models. It must provide leadership in identifying and coordinating policies and programs on mental and substance use disorders. It must periodically review the Administration's programs and activities on diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and recovery, to find programs that duplicate each other or that aren't evidence-based, effective, or efficient, and to recommend how to fix, merge, or eliminate them. It must issue and update guidance for grant applicants that encourages evidence-based practices and offers technical help. And it must carry out other activities that encourage innovation and spread evidence-based practices. (c) Choosing evidence-based practices and models. When gathering and evaluating information under (b)(3), the Laboratory may favor models that improve coordination between mental and physical health providers, improve coordination between providers and the justice and corrections systems, or improve the cost, quality, and efficiency of care for adults with serious mental illness, children with serious emotional disturbance, or people in a mental health crisis. It may also include clinical protocols for people with early-stage serious mental illness. In doing this work, the Laboratory must consult the Chief Medical Officer appointed under section 290aa(g), representatives of the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism on an ongoing basis, other relevant federal agencies, and clinical and analytical experts in psychiatric care, health care management, education, corrections health care, and mental health courts, plus anyone else the Assistant Secretary thinks appropriate. (d) Deadline. The Laboratory had to begin implementing this section by January 1, 2018. (e) Promoting innovation. The Assistant Secretary, working with the Laboratory, may award grants to states, local governments, Indian tribes or tribal organizations, schools, and nonprofits, to develop evidence-based interventions. These grants can fund evaluating a promising model that needs more development — whether to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment, or recovery for mental illness, serious emotional disturbance, substance use disorders, or co-occurring conditions, or to better integrate physical and mental/substance use health services. They can also fund expanding, replicating, or scaling up evidence-based programs to improve screening, diagnosis, and treatment — mainly by training staff to apply these programs, or by weaving them into care models across specialties and jurisdictions. In awarding these grants, the Assistant Secretary consults, as appropriate, with the Chief Medical Officer, the advisory councils described in section 290aa–1, and the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (f) Funding. Congress authorized $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2023 through 2027 to carry out this section.