Accessible data on mental health and public safety

CCJBH launched a multi-year project to develop a research-based framework called Public Health Meets Public Safety (PH/PS). The PH/PS Framework was designed to bring together publicly available data that can help policymakers and practitioners understand the intersections between behavioral health and involvement in the justice system and to identify promising points of intervention at these intersections. Policymakers need access to relevant and comprehensive data to inform efforts towards reducing the number of people with behavioral health needs in the criminal justice system. Historically, however, it has been difficult to find and access data that connects the domains of public health and public safety.

Given recent efforts of the Department of Health Care Services, Behavioral Health Transformation (DHCS-BHT), including the crisis continuum of care, the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab analyzed the PH/PS framework in an effort to determine how all of this work could become aligned to maximize the PH/PS work performed to date. Thus, CCJBH reached out to DHCS to discuss potentially using the PH/PS data visualization and inventory in future efforts to improve California’s behavioral health delivery system. 

Subsequently, the Possibility Lab analyzed the PH/PS framework in an effort to determine how all of this work could become aligned with to maximize the PH/PS work performed to date. The Possibility Lab preemptively grouped categories of “Goals for Improvement” and “Goals for Reduction” that together provide a broad indication of communities’ overall functioning and wellbeing.