In his six years as Governor, Gavin Newsom has made unprecedented efforts to transform California’s systems of mental health and substance use care for all Californians. We are happy to see the Governor maintain the state’s investments in these efforts in his 2025-26 budget proposal, outlined Friday in Sacramento. To ensure the success of these vital initiatives, it’s critical for the state to prioritize effective implementation.
Through our Vision 2030 initiative, the Steinberg Institute is focused on reducing homelessness, hospitalization, and incarceration for Californians with behavioral health challenges. A key first step in that initiative is ensuring that the proper framework for measuring results is in place. This requires improving the methods and type of data collected about California’s myriad behavioral health programs.
As part of the proposed 2025-26 budget, Governor Newsom proposes increasing scrutiny of local governments’ fiscal and outcome reporting through the Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS). We support this idea and encourage the state to explore how HDIS data can be integrated with health and criminal justice data to provide a more complete picture of how our systems are working as a whole. These are interconnected challenges that require integrated solutions. Actionable data on homelessness programs is essential for California’s mental health and substance use disorder initiatives to succeed.
Our CEO, Karen Larsen currently serves on California’s Behavioral Health Transformation Quality and Equity Advisory Committee, tasked with supporting the development of a quality and equity strategy and advising the state on a comprehensive vision for improving population behavioral health statewide. We are dedicated to working with engaged partners from across the state committed to improving our care systems.
California faces a pivotal moment – with the opportunity to ensure that historic investments in behavioral health leave none of our most vulnerable behind. Accurately tracking outcomes is a critical piece of the puzzle.