Scale + Lab Annual Letter 2025

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Behavioral Health Emergency Response Initiative (BHERi): In 2025, the SCALE + Lab, led by Senior Fellow and Research Professor Mindy Tarlow, secured a three-year funding commitment from Blue Meridian Partners for the Behavioral Health Emergency Response Initiative (BHERi). The Pew Charitable Trusts has also extended its support for BHERi into 2026. BHERi seeks to reduce the frequency with which calls to 911 involving people experiencing mental health and/or substance use emergencies result in arrest or transport to the emergency department. The goal is to increase the likelihood people in crisis are instead connected to community-based care.

Launched in 2024, BHERi is a collaboration between the SCALE + Lab and three implementing partners: the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice at Wayne State University in Michigan, Clear Pathways at Peg’s Foundation in Ohio, and Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in Texas. BHERi is concentrating initially on making significant, measurable progress in these three states, with a long-term vision for making a major impact on this issue nationally.

911 Workforce Convening: As an outgrowth of our Behavioral Health Emergency Response Initiative, the SCALE + Lab is leading a national effort focused on advancing and supporting the 911 workforce. Despite their critical role in public safety, 911 professionals—comprising call takers, dispatchers, telecommunicators, and behavioral health professionals—remain under-recognized in both public discourse and policy investment. This critical workforce faces multiple challenges, including staff shortages, attrition, burnout, and trauma, and a dearth of career supports.

The Lab is currently designing an invitation-only convening to be held in March 2026 that will gather information, test ideas, and shape priorities that will help advance the 911 workforce. The convening will bring together subject matter experts, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Perspectives from workforce development, the public sector workforce, and 911 operations and policy will help identify promising practices as well as gaps and shed insights on key questions, including how solutions could be scaled across the nation’s nearly 9,000 emergency communications centers.

Inequality + Opportunity Initiative: Tarlow engaged with NYU’s Inequality + Opportunity initiative in multiple ways in 2025: representing Marron in a leadership role as co-chair of the Research, Policy, and Practice committee; participating with a cross-section of NYU faculty to advance youth opportunity and well-being; and receiving a grant targeted to youth in crisis as a complement to the SCALE + Lab’s Behavioral Health Emergency Response Initiative. The Inequality + Opportunity Initiative is housed in the NYU Office of the Provost under the leadership of Vice Provost Elise Cappella.

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