SUD Crisis

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) should ensure availability of critical medications to treat mental health and substance use disorders (MH/SUDs) through telehealth prescribing without burdensome in-person requirements that restrict access, particularly in rural and other underserved communities.

Congress should create a grant program to support state planning efforts to establish efforts like California’s Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Act that help individuals with untreated mental health and substance use disorders (MH/SUDs) avoid homelessness, incarceration, and even death. Planning grants should be tied to ensuring strong protections of individuals’ rights and system accountability.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) should use the waiver process established by Section 1135 of the Social Security Act to temporarily modify Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) requirements to augment treatment capacity and loosen Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) restrictions to allow notification to families of persons who have overdosed and been revived.[1]

Federal agencies and Congress should dramatically expand the distribution of Naloxone, the lifesaving opioid overdose reversal medication, utilizing the widespread distribution of Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) for heart attacks as a possible model.[1][2] Policymakers should ensure that no-cost naloxone is available to respond to opioid overdoses.

Tribal representatives must have the opportunity to serve on federal task forces and commissions seeking to address the opioid epidemic. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force and the National Committee on Heroin, Opioid, and Pain Efforts (HOPE) must include tribal representation.[1]

Senate and House appropriators should include in the annual Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies spending bill a requirement that as a condition of receiving certain Department of Justice funding, local criminal legal systems, including law enforcement and juvenile justice programs, should be required to develop comprehensive diversion plans with health systems and mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) providers in their communities.[1] Additionally, efforts to universally screen and assess individuals at arrest, sentencing, and all points across the criminal legal system continuum for MH/SUD should be expanded to inform connections to appropriate treatment and services.[2]