Alliance Alert: This new advisory from SAMHSA highlights the urgent need to expand behavioral health teams, particularly by integrating community health workers and peer support specialists, to reach people living in “care deserts” where access to services remains limited. The guidance reinforces what we have long known: building a strong, community-based workforce that includes peers is essential to expanding access, improving engagement, and supporting recovery-oriented services in underserved communities.
As federal priorities and guidance continue to evolve, it is critical that advocates, providers, and system leaders understand how these recommendations translate into real-world practice at the state and local level. At the Alliance’s upcoming Executive Seminar, we will explore these federal policy shifts alongside ’s efforts to strengthen its behavioral health workforce, expand peer services, and improve access to support. Through dedicated policy workshops featuring both Alliance and state leaders, participants will gain practical insight into how to align with these emerging strategies and help ensure that all communities, especially those historically underserved, have access to the supports they need.
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Advisory: Expanding Behavioral Health Teams in Care Deserts with Community Health Workers and Peer Support Specialists
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) | March 2026
Accessible behavioral health services are essential for healthy communities. Individuals who are able to access early interventions and timely behavioral health services experience reduced symptom severity, improved educational and employment outcomes, and improved quality of life.1-3 Timely care is essential not only for mitigating the progression of behavioral health conditions, but also for addressing early warning signs and health-related behaviors before they escalate into more serious issues.4 These goals are central to the Make America Healthy Again initiative,5 which prioritizes expanding access to behavioral health care, strengthening the workforce, and promoting community-based, prevention oriented strategies.
This issue brief aligns with those priorities by focusing on expanding access to services in behavioral health care deserts—regions where access to behavioral health services is inadequate or individual needs are unmet due to workforce shortages, long-waiting times, high costs of services, or other challenges such as language barriers.6
More than one-third of Americans live in an area experiencing behavioral health workforce shortages —which includes psychiatrists, psychiatric physician Definitions assistants, psychologists, mental health and addictions counselors, marriage and family therapists, school counselors, and other core behavioral health providers.7 Additionally, an estimated one-third of mental health visits are conducted by primary care providers and 22% of Americans live in an area experiencing shortages of primary care physicians.7,8 As a result of these workforce shortages and other barriers, individuals in care deserts are often unable to access the necessary supports and services to meet their behavioral health needs, and many do not receive treatment for conditions such as depression, anxiety, and substance use.
Enhancing behavioral health services by including community health workers and peer support specialists on behavioral health teams is a promising approach to bolster services in care deserts. This issue brief explores the roles of community health workers and peer support specialists and discusses how they can support behavioral health in care deserts, to ensure that individuals receive the services they need to thrive.
Workforce shortages, however, are only one aspect of the complex conditions within behavioral health care deserts. Other approaches for addressing the needs of individuals in care deserts are included at the end of this brief.
See the rest of the advisory at the link below