Increasing Behavioral Health Equity: The Development and Utilization of the Congressional Behavioral Health Dataset

Overview: Behavioral healthcare is critical, especially during a global pandemic, yet services and access remain inadequate, particularly for marginalized populations. This presentation describes the development and research implications of the Congressional Behavioral Health Dataset, a comprehensive resource for behavioral health-related bills and their sponsors. Social justice and advocacy implications are discussed.Proposal text: Significance:

The majority of those who need behavioral healthcare treatments do not receive them due to limitations in access to care, evidence-based services, and overall public engagement (Mental Health in America, 2021; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2020). For example, findings taken from the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) (SAMHSA, 2020) indicated that approximately 61% of young adults (aged 18-25) and 55% of adults (aged 18+) with any mental illness (AMI) received no mental health services of any kind. Further, according to the same survey, marginalized communities are disproportionately affected: 51% of whites with AMI received mental health services in 2019, while only 33% of African Americans and 34% of Hispanic or Latinx populations with AMI received services (SAMHSA, 2020).

This need for behavioral health services has expanded significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic (Di Giuseppe, et al., 2020; Krase et al., 2021; Ramos-Lira et al., 2021). Notably, the US Surgeon General and a coalition of leading experts in pediatric health declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2021). These demands for services are overwhelming our current mental health system (Parker-Pope, 2021) and suggest the need to expand access to behavioral healthcare treatment and address barriers to its use.

As inequities to access and services persist despite consistent advocacy, it is critical that researchers continue to examine the behavioral health policy process in order to identify key influences to policy outcomes (Corrigan & Watson, 2003). Understanding which legislative factors related to the policies and their sponsors affect the success and failure of quality behavioral health-specific bills could help predict future activity, foster effective advocacy strategies, and ultimately address behavioral healthcare inequities across the country.

Session: Using the Congressional Behavioral Health Dataset in Research and Advocacy

The researchers have created a comprehensive, accessible behavioral health legislative dataset consisting of all behavioral health-related bills introduced in congress from 2011-2021. Variables collected include all policy and policymaker-related factors publicly available (e.g., bill outcomes, legislator demographics, etc.). This session will describe the creation of the dataset and its use to assess legislative factors that affect behavioral health-related bill outcomes. The dataset is a key tool for research that seeks to (1) investigate the congressional legislative response to behavioral health, (2) highlight factors associated with bill outcomes, and (3) identify and disseminate patterns between administrations that can be used in future policy-making.

This session will also cover how this dataset could be used to improve future advocacy efforts. The dataset itself is a key tool for increasing the civic literacy of social work practitioners, activists, and students regarding federal policy processes, past and current representations of behavioral health in Congress, and best practices for the targeting and influencing of congressional leadership related to behavioral health legislation. Further, while this particular dataset includes only behavioral health-specific bills, the method of dataset development could be applied to any and all social work-related topics, resulting in similar research and advocacy-related implications.