Ohio's investments in behavioral health are working. As you prepare your first budget and your first term, we ask you to protect and build on them.
We represent three very different Cuyahoga County organizations. Positive Education Program (PEP) is the OhioRISE Care Management Entity for central Cuyahoga County. The Centers is one of the region's largest behavioral health providers. Thrive for Change is a small, peer-led nonprofit for people with substance-use disorders. Our goal, however, is the same: helping people reach their full potential by addressing mental health and substance use challenges. The results are worth celebrating.
Since OhioRISE's launch in 2022, PEP has served over 4,000 young people with serious, multi-system behavioral health needs. Only about one percent required inpatient re-hospitalization, keeping young people in their homes and communities.
The Centers opened the Glick Recovery Campus, Cuyahoga County's first 24/7 behavioral health crisis center, serving the nearly 10,000 people in crisis who turn to local emergency departments each year a place designed to meet their needs.
In 2025, Thrive for Change distributed 32,000 doses of naloxone, 48,000 fentanyl test strips, and documented over 130 overdose reversals attributed to its work.
Behind each number is a person who found hope and healing.
And demand keeps climbing. Before OhioRISE, PEP had an average daily census of 400 across the county in the service on which OhioRISE was modeled; today it serves 1,300 in central Cuyahoga County alone. The Centers' program for people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders grew nearly 80 percent in two years. Thrive for Change now sees over 5,000 engagements annually through street outreach alone, doubling over the last four years. Sustaining these gains depends on decisions you will make in your first months in office. We ask that you:
Recommendations
1. Protect funding that works. Results like these require reliable funding. In anticipation of increased need following federal-level changes that shift behavioral health funding to prioritize treatment over prevention, there are several actions to consider.
- Maintain funding for OhioRISE and the Child Wellness Campus initiative.
- Implement sustainable financing structures for behavioral health crisis services.
- Strengthen systems to reduce administrative burden, support staffing, and promote sustainability for intake and case management across the behavioral health services landscape.
- Provide reliable, flexible funding for evidence-based overdose prevention measures and peer-led services for individuals with substance-use disorders.
2. Support the Behavioral Health Workforce. All three of our agencies face staffing shortages because reimbursement rates cannot support competitive pay.
- Make the community behavioral health services enhanced rate permanent.
- Expand and strengthen loan repayment support for clinical supervisors, clinicians, nurses, community health workers and peer supporters.
3. Reduce Administrative Burden. Time spent on duplicative paperwork is time not spent with clients.
- Create and require Medicaid managed care plans to share one audit standard and accept each other's reviews.
- Speed Medicaid enrollment for new hires, with billing retroactive to their start date.
- Monitor the impact of Medicaid’s new utilization management requirements for community behavioral health services and work with providers to minimize administrative and financial impact.
- Develop strategies to help current Medicaid expansion enrollees remain enrolled and avoid coverage gaps caused by administrative lags.
Ohio has shown what works. We would be honored to host you at any of our sites.
Sincerely,
Eric Gordon, CEO, Positive Education Program
Eric L. Morse, MSSA, LISW-S, President & CEO, The Centers
Bethany Roebuck, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Thrive for Change
