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ARCH COLLABORATIVE - CEO Kimberly Johnson
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Requested Action(s)
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a) INFORMATIONAL PRESENTATION - Presentation regarding the True North Behavioral Health Campus
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Financial Impact:
There is no financial impact associated with receiving this presentation.
Background Information:
The True North Behavioral Health Campus is designed to be more than a facility; it is a turning point for the rural North State. The proposed model will bring together a comprehensive crisis continuum, ensuring that children, youth, and adults have access to safe, timely, and appropriate treatment much closer to home. California is in the midst of an unprecedented behavioral health transformation that will either compound the challenges rural counties already face or serve as a catalyst for lasting, regional solutions for individuals experiencing severe behavioral health crises. Our emergency rooms are already holding patients in mental health crisis or those who are needing medical detox for days at a time while they await appropriate placement. Meanwhile, Medicaid cuts have caused concern for rural critical access hospitals in our region which are often the first stop for many in behavioral health crises. The development of True North Behavioral Health Campus is poised to strengthen the crisis continuum.
Beginning in January 2026, SB 43 will expand involuntary hold criteria to include substance use disorder, and Proposition 1 will soon require what are currently mental health-only facilities to treat patients needing substance use disorder treatment. These changes will increase the strain on emergency rooms, law enforcement, mobile crisis teams, and overall bed availability. Given this impact, the State of California established SB 1238, which allows stand-alone facilities to receive patients who are gravely disabled to ease the burden on emergency rooms. The BHCIP bond was then created to build behavioral health facilities, especially the kind of integrated campus we have designed.
Since January 2025, Arch Collaborative and the Shasta Health Assessment and Redesign Collaborative have engaged more than 100 stakeholders-providers, counties, law enforcement, physicians, Veterans Affairs, mobile crisis teams, and families of those with severe behavioral health needs-to shape the design of this campus.
Stakeholder input, paired with Arch’s qualitative review of regional needs assessments, contracts, and provider availability, and a quantitative analysis of hospital and jail data, has identified the most urgent gaps in the crisis continuum. The result is a proposal grounded in both lived experience and data, positioned to take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity through BHCIP Round 2: Unmet Needs.