Most Americans agree that mental health care should be accessible, affordable, and tailored to an individual’s background and needs. Yet too often, our models of evidence-based care may not meet the needs of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ community members, who experience additional barriers to care, including financial constraints, stigma, and a lack of culturally responsive providers. To address these gaps, California has embraced community-defined evidence practices—approaches rooted in cultural traditions and supported by academic research—as effective alternatives to traditional care models.

Community-defined evidence practices are longstanding, culturally responsive practices that provide healing and holistic mental health support in ways that traditional, evidence-based practices (EBPs) in behavioral health care typically do not. Initial funding for community-defined evidence practices in California through the California Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP) is the result of years of advocacy on the part of community-based organizations that offer culturally relevant care grounded in lived experience. To build a truly inclusive behavioral health system, California must move beyond recognition of community-defined evidence practices toward sustainable funding and delivery mechanisms of these critical approaches.

As California reimagines its behavioral health system under the Behavioral Health Services Act (BHSA), sustainability for community-defined evidence practices hinges on whether counties and community-defined evidence practice providers can work together to integrate these innovative practices into counties’ existing behavioral health continuum and provide a sustained model for funding. The diversity of what community-defined evidence practices (CDEPs) offer–from traditional indigenous mindfulness practices to Hmong practices for self-care—means that the strategies for integration and sustainability must be equally varied. Unlike traditional evidence-based interventions, CDEPs do not neatly fit into existing models for behavioral health care services that can be reimbursed through insurance, presenting challenges as counties work to identify how they can fit into their behavioral health offerings. Moreover, CDEPs emerged within communities reflecting various cultural values and needs, making their integration into county behavioral health systems a complex, but necessary, undertaking.

In the last nine months, Third Sector has worked closely with the Fresno County Department of Behavioral Health and three community-based organizations that offer CDEPs in the county to identify practical, tailored strategies for CDEP sustainability. These strategies offer ongoing revenue opportunities for community-based organizations through integration with Medi-Cal billable services.

Read the full article about community-defined evidence practices by Camilla Dohlman at Third Sector.