The Minnesota Legislature just had one of its most impactful sessions in memory, with a historic surplus leading to a wide variety of investments that will improve lives across the state. Among those investments is funding that will combat addiction through a variety of prevention, harm-reduction, and treatment-related initiatives.
At the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), we went into this legislative session knowing bold action was needed to save lives. Much like the rest of the nation, the opioid epidemic in Minnesota is getting worse, with more and more people dying of opioid overdoses each year. We worked closely with the Office of Addiction and Recovery, advocates, families impacted by addiction, and several others to develop legislative proposals that would improve the quality of care while increasing equity in the state’s behavioral health system. Below are just some of the investments and initiatives resulting from this session:
- Minnesota will provide new grants to expand the number of withdrawal management programs and will fund more training for treatment providers.
- The state will provide start-up and capacity grants for family treatment programs and safe recovery sites. Family treatment programs allow families to stay together while a parent undergoes substance use disorder treatment. Safe recovery sites will offer services and supplies that help prevent overdoses and injection-related diseases and injuries, while connecting people to a variety of wraparound services.
- Minnesota will provide more resources for naloxone and culturally specific programs.
- Grants for traditional healing practices and overdose prevention programs will receive permanent funding.
- The state will move to evidence-based standards set by the American Society of Addiction Medicine for substance use disorder treatment.
- New state staff will improve program integrity through an expanded utilization management process, improve oversight of treatment programs, and use data to evaluate gaps.
- New best-practice standards for recovery community organizations will ensure services are high-quality, ethical, and culturally responsive. In addition, additional grant funding for recovery community organizations, training for peer services, and streamlined provider standards for culturally specific organizations will increase access to services.
- Quality and consumer protection standards will help ensure that people have high-quality support in their recovery journeys.
- Additional investments will develop a public awareness campaign to promote recovery.
- We are also going to study adding behavioral health services in prisons and jails and traditional healing to the Medical Assistance Program.
Improving the quality of care is critical, but the impact will be limited if we don’t increase the capacity for care. To do that, we must strengthen Minnesota’s behavioral health workforce – especially in communities that are most impacted by this crisis. That’s why the governor and legislators invested in more cultural and ethnic minority infrastructure grants to help recruit and retain behavioral health professionals to offer culturally responsive services to Black, Indigenous and people of color communities. They also funded an expansion of grants to help providers recruit staff in rural areas and underserved communities.
With the sheer volume of new investments, it will take time to set up the infrastructure needed to administer funding and get these initiatives off the ground. And in some cases, we’ll need to engage with communities prior to implementation to ensure programs are right-sized and fit the needs of the community. For instance, the new safe recovery sites will not be established until DHS has had a chance to engage in robust, thoughtful conversations with community members and leaders. That said, we know just how urgently this funding is needed. DHS staff are already hard at work laying the groundwork so we can get this funding out to community partners as soon as possible.
At the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), we are deeply grateful for all our partners’ help in developing these proposals and getting them to the finish line. These investments made by the governor and Legislature will save lives and create new pathways to recovery for many Minnesotans. We look forward to strengthening existing partnerships and building new ones, and to getting funds into the hands of organizations that will do the best for people suffering from substance use disorder.
Kristine Preston is the deputy assistant commissioner of the Behavioral Health Division at the Minnesota Department of Human Services.
Last Updated on July 13, 2023