The Bowen Center for Health Workforce Research and Policy is delighted to announce that our organization has received a significant grant to develop national recommendations for strengthening the behavioral health and substance use workforce.
The $592,338 award from the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) will fund a comprehensive 50-state policy review and stakeholder engagement process aimed at creating a first-of-its-kind national framework for behavioral health paraprofessional roles.
Hannah Maxey, center, pictured at a Playbook Project stakeholder convening. | Photo by Daiyawn Smith/Dai in Dai Out Productions
“This framework aims to address the critical gap in service access for individuals suffering from opioid use disorder by recommending best practices for training, credentialing and reimbursement based on lessons learned from states with formalized roles,” said Bowen Center Director Hannah L. Maxey, PhD, MPH, RDH.
The grant was one of only four awarded through FORE’s Innovation Challenge Program, which supports new solutions to difficult issues related to the opioid and overdose crisis.
This initiative builds upon the Bowen Center’s Playbook for Enhancing Indiana’s Mental and Behavioral Health Workforce, published in 2024 with support from Lilly Endowment Inc., keeping the ball rolling on mental and behavioral health workforce research.
The Bowen Center will release more details about this exciting project in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned!
For more information, visit: https://medicine.iu.edu/news/2025/05/bowen-center-fore-grant-lilly-endowment
For more information about our past work on this topic, check out the Playbook project below or go to the project homepage. You can also see our full portfolio of past large-scale projects on our dedicated Portfolio page here.