A new session of Congress, the 118th, has just kicked off.
In the session that just ended, Congress took important steps to address the mental health and addiction crises. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, which is the $1.7 trillion end-of-year omnibus spending bill passed in December 2022, included billions of dollars in funding and several policy changes critical to addressing these crises, including provisions to:
- Expand access to medications for addiction treatment
- Support education and training to bolster the behavioral health care workforce
- Strengthen parity enforcement
- Expand crisis response services
- Promote quality recovery housing
- Support maternal mental health and addiction screening and treatment
- Ensure access to mental health and addiction care during public health emergencies
- Increase access to non-opioid treatments for pain management
- Support youth mental health
- Reauthorize key programs and grants that support prevention, treatment and recovery services
These changes were enacted thanks to the help of our advocates who shared their stories and signed our action alerts to ensure their members of Congress knew the importance and urgency of these policies. This could not have happened without you.
Despite this progress, we know that many barriers remain that prevent access to needed prevention, treatment, harm reduction and recovery services and contribute to the ongoing and escalating mental health and addiction crises.
We need your help telling lawmakers that their work on addiction isn’t done and that addiction needs to remain a priority.
We encourage you to send a letter to your members of Congress thanking them for their critical work in the last term and reminding them of the importance of continuing to address the addiction crisis.
