Create a data surveillance system

Currently, the U.S. public health surveillance system for mental health and substance use is severely lacking. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), for example, runs the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which provides estimates of substance use and mental health at the national, state, and substate levels.[1] Yet this data is delayed and is not broken down by local geographies that would allow officials to respond to local trends in near real time. Similarly, the CDC’s Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts for a given month are released five months later and are not broken down by demographic groups or sub-state geographies, making meaningful responses extraordinarily difficult.[2]

In contrast, the U.S. has robust data available across many decades relating to the U.S. population, economy, and workforce. For example, the Department of Commerce houses the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis[3], while the Department of Labor houses the Bureau of Labor Statistics.[4] The failure to collect such robust data for mental health and substance use leaves our federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as other stakeholders, ill-positioned to properly address population needs and trends. By creating a world-class public health data system for mental health and substance use that collects a wide variety of mental health and substance use disorder data by demographic groups, Congress can ensure systems affecting mental health and substance use have foundational data needed to improve mental health and well-being across the country.