We are pleased to share with you SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Equity Challenge: Outreach and Engagement Strategies for Underserved Racial and Ethnic Communities organized by the Office of Behavioral Health Equity’s Elevate CBOs Initiative. The goal of this Challenge is to identify and highlight Community-Based Organizations’ (CBO) innovative outreach and engagement strategies that improve access to behavioral health services in these communities. As CBOs often play an important role in addressing the behavioral health needs of the community, this Challenge will inform SAMHSA about community-based strategies to connect people to care.

The Challenge fund has $500,000 available for up to ten awards through this competition. Four awards will be dedicated to the winning strategies that address mental health; three awards will be dedicated to the winning strategies that address substance use prevention; three awards will be dedicated to the winning strategies that address substance use treatment, respectively. The challenge prize for each winner is expected to be $50,000 plus multiple opportunities for recognition.

Submission will be accepted until June 8, 2023 at 5pm ET.

SAMHSA aims to learn the following from the participants:

• What challenges have CBOs faced in connecting people from underserved racial and ethnic communities to behavioral health services?

• What outreach and engagement strategies or innovative methods have CBOs used to connect people from racial and ethnic underserved communities to behavioral health services?

• How do CBOs know their outreach and engagement strategies are successful? How do they measure their success?

• How do CBOs incorporate equity into their outreach and engagement strategies?

For more information, please visit https://www.challenge.gov/?challenge=behavioralhealthequity