Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Behavioral Health Disorders

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Mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) disorders, including mental illness and substance use disorders, affect every U.S. population group, community, and neighborhood. Existing infrastructure focuses more on responding to MEB crises, through treatment and recovery, rather than preventing them through evidence-based policy approaches and programs. Prevention services that do exist are insufficiently funded and fragmented.

Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders focuses on building and sustaining a comprehensive prevention infrastructure for MEB disorders as a whole. Conclusions and recommendations of this report focus on closing research gaps, supporting an MEB disorder prevention workforce, ensuring adequate data to support prevention and reporting, establishing clear governance, securing sustainable funding, and enacting evidence-based policies.

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Publication information

384 pages · 6 x 9 · paperback
ISBN Paperback: 0-309-73092-9
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-73093-7
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/28577

Suggested citation

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Marcella Alsan

Marcella Alsan, PhD, MD, (Co-chair), is a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Alsan received a BA from Harvard University (1999), a Master’s in public health from Harvard School of Public Health (2005), a MD from Loyola University (2005), and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University (2012). Alsan trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Fellowship – then combined the PhD with an Infectious Disease Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (2013). Prior to returning to Harvard she was on faculty at Stanford. She is an applied microeconomist studying health inequality. Some of her recent papers include “Does Diversity Matter for Health: Experimental Evidence from Oakland” and “Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men” – published in the American Economic Review and The Quarterly Journal of Economics, respectively. These papers have been cited in the New York Times and other major media outlets and findings have been presented to the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is currently on the Board of Editors for Science Magazine, Co-Editor of the Journal of Health Economics and Co-Chair of the Health Care Delivery Initiative of Poverty Action Lab based out of MIT. She is the co-recipient of the 2019 Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics.

Marthe R. Gold

Marthe Gold MD, MPH, (Co-chair), is a Senior Research Scholar at the New York Academy of Medicine and Logan Professor Emerita at the CUNY School of Medicine where she served as Chair Department of Community Health and Social Medicine (1996-2015). Before that, she worked in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (DHHS) from 1990-’96. She has practiced medicine in rural and urban underserved settings. Elected to the IOM in 2008 she chaired its committee “For the Publics’ Health” whose 3 reports and recommendations focused on building the public health infrastructure. She is currently an advisor to America’s Health Rankings, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, and Fairness Dialogues Expert Advisory Committee (of the NIH Clinical Center Department of Bioethics). A graduate of the Tufts University School of Medicine, Dr. Gold's clinical training was in family practice at the University of Rochester program. She received her MPH from the Columbia School of Public Health.

Rinad Beidas

Rinad S. Beidas, PhD, is Chair and Ralph Seal Paffenbarger Professor of Medical Social Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Dr. Beidas is an internationally recognized implementation scientist leading a department that is ranked first in the nation for public health in medical schools. Using innovative methods from implementation science to advocate and amplify the needs of various communities in pursuit of achieving population health and social justice at scale, Dr. Beidas has done work to close the research-to-practice gap in firearm injury prevention, mental health, cancer care, HIV, and cardiovascular disease. Her work with the mental health system in Philadelphia directly informed how the Department of Behavioral Health supports the implementation of evidence-based practice. She is at the forefront of integrating approaches from behavioral economics and implementation science, has published over 300 peer reviewed publications, and has led to two NIH center grants. She is an associate editor for Implementation Science and has served on numerous scientific advisory boards. She serves on the National Institutes of Health National Advisory Mental Health Council. She is the recipient of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies President’s New Researcher Award; the American Psychological Foundation Diane J. Willis Early Career Award; and the Acenda Institute Research Pioneer Award. Dr. Beidas holds a bachelor of arts in psychology from Colgate University and a doctorate of philosophy in psychology from Temple University. Dr. Beidas previously served on the Optum Behavioral Health Clinical and Scientific Advisory Board and is completing a consultation for Optum Behavioral Health through her sole-proprietor company Implementation Science & Practice, LLC. She is a senior advisor to the University of Pennsylvania Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics and serves as an advisory board member for the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic-Expansion Evaluation Advisory Panel, ETUDES NIMH P50 Center (University of Pittsburgh), and NCHATS NIMH P50 Center (Michigan State University). Dr. Beidas serves on the boards of AIM High Youth and Kligenstein Third Generation Foundation, both philanthropic organizations that support early career researchers. She is an active researcher in the field.

Camille C. Cioffi

Camille C. Cioffi, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon and Research Scientist at Oregon Research Institute and Influents Innovations. Dr. Cioffi’s research focuses on supporting families impacted by substance use disorders to improve health outcomes and prevent the intergenerational transmission of substance use disorders. She is particularly interested in identifying evidence-based program developed by communities most impacted by disparities in substance use-related and preventing harms associated with substance use among individuals at risk for overdose. Dr. Cioffi is a member of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration and has provided overall and domain specific leadership on more than 10 National Institutes of Health grants. Dr. Cioffi received her PhD from the University of Oregon in Prevention Science in 2020 and has prior experience as a K-12 administrator and educator. Dr. Cioffi also consults for Comagine Health, a non-profit that advises the Oregon Health Authority on family care plans.

Joseph P. Gone

Joseph P. Gone, PhD, is Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program, Professor of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University. He taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for sixteen years, where he directed the Native American Studies program prior to joining the faculty at Harvard. An enrolled member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre Tribal Nation of Montana, he also served briefly as the Chief Administrative Officer for the Fort Belknap Indian reservation. An international expert in the psychology and mental health of American Indians and other Indigenous peoples, Gone has collaborated with tribal communities for nearly 30 years to re-envision conventional mental health services for advancing Indigenous well-being. As a clinical-community psychologist and action researcher, he has published over 100 scientific articles. Honored with more than 20 fellowships and career awards (including a Guggenheim Fellowship), Gone was the recipient of the 2021 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research, and the 2023 American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Gone is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Illinois, and he also trained at Dartmouth College and McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Kyle L. Grazier

Kyle Lynn Grazier, DrPH, MPH, MS, is Richard Carl Jelinek Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical School, and recent Director of the UM Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center. Prior academic positions include Cornell University (J. Thomas Clark Chair in Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise), University of California at Berkeley (King Sweesy and Robert Womack Chair in Medical Research and Public Health) and Yale University. She received her doctorate and MPH from University of California at Berkeley, MS (Engineering) from the University of Notre Dame, and a BS from Valparaiso University.
Her research seeks to understand and improve access to behavioral health care services by vulnerable populations. She conducts research on systems approaches to equitable, high quality, culturally appropriate services through alternative models of delivery, payment, and workforce. Dr. Grazier studies and tests strategies for structural changes, coordination and integration with primary care, housing, and support services and estimates the costs of processes and outcomes. She has conducted international research in Croatia as a Fulbright Scholar, and nationally with support from the NIH, HRSA, SAMHSA and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has served on grant reviews committees for NIMH, NIDA, NIAAA, AHRQ, John A. Hartford Foundation, RWJ Foundation, the Nuffield Trust, CMS, and California, New York, and Michigan. Dr. Grazier sits on the board of directors for the Indiana University Health System. She is an active researcher in the field.

Jeffrey Hom

Jeffrey Hom, MD, MPH, MSH, is the director of Population Behavioral Health in the Behavioral Health Services division of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, which uses population-level and equity-driven approaches to advance the wellbeing of San Franciscans. A board-certified internist, Jeff oversees the Office of Overdose Prevention, focusing on reducing overdoses and the harms associated with substance use. Jeff most recently served as the medical director of the Division of Substance Use Prevention and Harm Reduction in the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, where he helped lead the City’s response to addiction and overdose. He was also a board member of Mental Health Partnerships and faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania and the Jefferson College of Population Health. For his efforts Jeff has been selected as a Zuckerman Fellow at Harvard's Center for Public Leadership, a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, an AcademyHealth’s Presidential Scholarship recipient, and awarded the Common Good Award by Bowdoin College’s Board of Trustees. Jeff received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his internal medicine residency at UCSF and his fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his Master of Science in Health Policy Research. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Public Health as a Bloomberg Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Margaret Kuklinski

Margaret Kuklinski, PhD, is the Director of the Social Development Research Group (SDRG), Acting Director of the Center for Communities That Care (CTC), and Endowed Associate Professor of Prevention in Social Work in the School of Social Work, University of Washington. At SDRG and the Center for CTC, she oversees multidisciplinary staff dedicated to promoting healthy development and preventing substance misuse and other problem behaviors in young people through rigorous prevention science and dissemination of effective preventive interventions. Dr. Kuklinski is a prevention scientist and health economist whose NIH- and foundation-funded research focuses on demonstrating the long-term impact of effective family-focused and community-based preventive interventions; partnering with communities, agencies, and services systems to implement and scale them; and building policy support for preventive interventions by demonstrating their benefits and costs. Dr. Kuklinski is a board member of the Board on Children Youth and Families in the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies. She is also a former member of the board of the Society for Prevention Research. She received a PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB in Economics from Harvard University.

David Mandell

David S. Mandell, ScD, is the Kenneth E. Appel Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He is trained as a psychiatric epidemiologist and mental health services researcher. The goal of his research is to improve the quality of care individuals with and at risk for psychiatric and developmental disabilities receive in their communities. This research is of two types. The first examines, at the state and national level, the effects of different strategies to organize, finance and deliver services on service use patterns and outcomes. The second consists of experimental studies designed to determine the best strategies to successfully implement proven-efficacious practices in community settings. Dr. Mandell holds a bachelor of arts in psychology from Columbia University and a doctorate of science from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Velma McBride Murry

Velma McBride Murry, PhD, is the Lois Autrey Betts Endowed Chair and is Associate Provost, Office of Research and Innovation and University Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Health Policy at Vanderbilt School of Medicine and Human and Organizational Development at Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee. Her research focuses on examining the significance of context to everyday life experiences of African American families and youth with specific consideration to processes through which racism, and other social structural stressors, cascade through families to influence parenting and family functioning, quality of life, and developmental outcomes and adjustment among youth, including mental and physical health. McBride Murry is Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, Community Engagement Research Core, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Past President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and President of The International Consortium of Developmental Science Societies. She was a former member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Children, Youth, and Families, and currently serves on numerous other boards and governing councils, including the National Academy of Medicine’s Culture of Health; Foundation for Child Development; and Society for Research in Child Development. McBride Murry is one of the 100 elected members to the 2020 Class of the National Academy of Medicine and appointed by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to serve a four-year term to the National Institutes of Health National Advisory Mental Health Council. She earned her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Missouri–Columbia.

Anand Parekh

Anand Parekh, MD, MPH, is Chief Medical Advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) where he provides clinical and public health expertise across the organization, including on behavioral health issues. His healthcare expertise has been recognized by the Washingtonian in its listing of Washington DC’s 500 Most Influential People. Prior to joining BPC, he completed a decade of service at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). As an HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health in the Senior Executive Service from 2008 to 2015, he developed and implemented national initiatives focused on prevention, wellness, and care management. Specifically, he played instrumental roles in the implementation of the Recovery Act’s Prevention and Wellness Fund, the Affordable Care Act’s prevention initiatives, and HHS’ Multiple Chronic Conditions Initiative. He received the Surgeon General’s Outstanding Service Award for his efforts. Parekh is a board-certified internal medicine physician, a fellow of the American College of Physicians, and an adjunct professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He currently serves on the Board of Population Health and Public Health Practice at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. His book Prevention First: Policymaking for a Healthier America was released in December 2019 and argues that prevention must be our nation’s top health policy priority. A native of Michigan, Parekh received a B.A. in political science, an M.D., and an M.P.H. in health management and policy from the University of Michigan. Parekh serves on three non-profit boards: Presidential Scholars Foundation, Water Aid America, and the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Lisa Saldana

Lisa Saldana, PhD, MA, is a Senior Research Scientist and the Associate Director of the Chestnut Health Systems Lighthouse Institute. She has expertise in the measurement of implementation process and resource use and has collaborated to operationalize the implementation process of over 80 prevention and intervention programs in over 2000 sites. This repository of data has generated knowledge regarding optimal implementation of evidence-based practice. Dr. Saldana also is an intervention developer and has developed an evidence-based integrated behavioral preventive intervention program for parental opioid/methamphetamine use, parenting deficits, mental health symptoms, and identified social determinant of health needs. Combined with her implementation expertise, Lisa has worked with state and Medicaid systems to create sustainable funding models to support implementation of the program in her own and other dually licensed behavioral health clinics. Dr. Saldana has been fully funded by NIDA and/or NIMH since 2002 and in 2023, was the recipient of the NIH HEAL Director’s Award for Excellence in Research for her prevention program for families involved in the child welfare and self-sufficiency systems. Lisa is a clinical psychologist by training and received her doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She was a 2011-2012 Implementation Research Institute fellow and now serves as core faculty. Dr. Saldana co-owns a small consulting LLC, Western Implementation Research and Evaluation, providing consultation on implementation process.

Paula Smith

Paula Smith, PhD, MA, is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy at the University of Utah. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in school-based prevention in middle and high schools. Dr. Smith’s primary research interests lie at the intersection of schools and juvenile justice systems - the school-to-prison pipeline, juvenile justice, restorative justice, and access to mental health resources. Her currently funded research projects are concerned with maximizing youth potential through the use of evidence-based research. She is the evaluator of a 5-year suicide prevention intervention in 3 Utah school districts and her most recently funded research project is a collaborative effort to develop student-led coalitions on Utah’s public institutions of higher education to improve mental health and decrease substance misuse among college students. Professionally, she is a Board Member for the National Prevention Science Coalition and served two terms on the Board of Directors for the Society for Prevention Research, of which she is a member. Dr. Smith received her doctorate from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she was a NIMH pre-doctoral fellow and a NIDA post-doctoral fellow.

Emily A. Wang

Emily Wang, MD, MAS, is a Professor in the Yale School of Medicine and School of Public Health and directs the new SEICHE Center for Health and Justice. The SEICHE Center is a collaboration between the Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School working to stimulate community transformation by identifying the legal, policy, and practice levers that can improve the health of individuals and communities impacted by mass incarceration. Dr. Wang leads the Health Justice Lab research program, which receives National Institutes of Health funding to investigate how incarceration influences chronic health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and opioid use disorder, and uses a participatory approach to study interventions which mitigate the impacts of incarceration. As an internist, she has cared for thousands of individuals with a history of incarceration and is co-founder of the Transitions Clinic Network, a consortium of 45 community health centers nationwide dedicated to caring for individuals recently released from correctional facilities by employing community health workers with histories of incarceration. Dr. Wang co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences consensus report on Decarcerating Correctional Facilities During COVID-19, the Steering Committee on Improving Collection of Indicators of Criminal Justice System Involvement in Population Health Data Programs, and workshops on Health and Incarceration and Means of Violence. Her work been published in the Lancet, JAMA, American Journal of Public Health, and Health Affairs, and showcased in national outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, and CNN. Dr. Wang has an AB from Harvard University, an MD from Duke University, and a MAS from the University of California, San Francisco.

Donald Warne

Donald Warne, MD, MPH, is an acclaimed physician, one of the world’s preeminent scholars in Indigenous health, health education, policy and equity as well as a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. He currently is the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health and serves as Johns Hopkins Provost Fellow for Indigenous Health Policy. He is an educational leader who created the first Indigenous health-focused Master of Public Health and PhD programs in the U.S. or Canada at the North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota, respectively. Warne previously served at the University of North Dakota as professor of Family and Community Medicine and associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as director of the Indians Into Medicine and Public Health programs at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He also served the Pima Indian population in Arizona as a primary care physician and later worked as a staff clinician with the NIH. He has also served as Health Policy Research director for the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, executive director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board, and faculty member at the Indian Legal Program of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Warne has received many awards recognizing his research accomplishments, educational leadership, and service work, including the American Public Health Association’s Helen Rodríguez-Trías Award for Social Justice and the Explorer’s Club 50 People Changing the World. Warne received a Bachelor of Science degree from Arizona State University, Doctor of Medicine degree from Stanford University’s School of Medicine, and a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Warne advises two nonprofit health care systems in South Dakota (Monument Health and Avera Health) on tribal engagement.

Webinar

Report Release Webinar: Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders

April 9, 2025

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (ET)

Past

Materials

Report Release PowerPoint

About

The costs associated with our nation’s mental health and substance use crises are unbearably high, measured in lost and shattered lives of children, parents, siblings, and friends, and in lost workers, human potential, and economic productivity. But the crises individuals and communities face are often preventable. Some effective interventions are available, but there are gaps pertaining to certain populations and age groups, and also gaps in resources (e.g., financial, human) needed to implement them. A new report from the National Academies, “Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders,” reviews the state of the existing infrastructure and highlights components in need of support, coordination, and funding to close gaps and provide needed interventions. The authoring committee was asked to provide recommendations to develop a blueprint, including actionable steps for building and sustaining an infrastructure for delivering prevention interventions for behavioral health disorders.
In a public release webinar on April 9th at 11:00 a.m. ET, members of the report authoring committee provided an overview of the report’s conclusions and recommendations and answered audience questions.

Additional Information

Is it a Closed Session event?

Not Closed

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Study Staff

BHprevention@nas.edu

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It is essential to the National Academies mission of providing evidence-based advice that participants in any of our meetings or events avoid political or partisan statements or commentary and maintain a culture of mutual respect. The statements and presentations during our meetings or events are solely those of the individual participants and do not necessarily represent the views of other participants or the National Academy of Sciences, which is a non-partisan, tax exempt organization that includes under its Charter the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine, and that operates the National Research Council.

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Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Behavioral Health Disorders

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Featured publication

Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders

Description

Collaborators

Committee

Sponsors

Staff

Major units and sub-units

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Provide feedback

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