Dear Mr. Kennedy,

First, thank you for bringing urgency and passion to the nation’s conversation on health and the chronic disease epidemic. Your desire to reimagine our approach to well-being is one that we share as a 30-year-old upstart association rooted in the fundamental idea that our health system is disintegrated. At the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA), we see your agenda aligning with ours in powerful ways. If your vision for health in America is about access, dignity, and truly holistic care, then integrated care should be at the heart of your Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) platform.

Let me explain.

CFHA represents thousands of professionals across the country who are implementing integrated care—the coordination of medical and behavioral health care in primary care and specialty settings. It’s a practical, people-first model that breaks down the harmful silos between mind and body care, reduces dependency on medical interventions alone and promotes healthy lifestyles, while providing timely, effective treatment and preventative care for mental health and substance use concerns—exactly the kind of community-based, decentralized solutions you often advocate for.

Where Our Visions Align

You’ve spoken passionately about the need to:

• Reclaim autonomy in healthcare decision-making
• Challenge overreliance on pharmaceuticals
• Build systems that promote resilience, wellness, and community health, especially for children and their families
• Ensure access to real care—not just services—for those who need it most
• Improve healthy lifestyles such as nutrition and exercise

Integrated care delivers on these ideals. It offers care where people already are: their doctor’s office, their community mental health clinic, their OB/GYN’s exam room. It provides immediate, non-stigmatized behavioral health support at the point of medical care, often in the same visit. It moves away from fragmented systems, provides alternatives to medication-only treatment paths, and leads patients to practical pathways for healing—whether for anxiety, diabetes management, depression, or addiction.

Three Key Recommendations to Advance Your Vision Through Integrated Care

1. Expand Access to Integrated Behavioral Health in Primary and Specialty Care
   • Make integrated behavioral health a requirement for federally funded health centers and primary care transformation efforts. Also encourage state Medicaid offices to renew efforts to limit regulation related to integrated care practices.
   • Invest in a stepped care workforce need to fill those roles, including: peer support specialists, community health workers, care managers, Behavioral Health Consultants (BHCs), medical providers in MH settings, and consulting psychiatrists trained for whole-person care delivery (can you believe we still only train these providers to do traditional siloed mental healthcare and not integrated care!).
   • Ensure that the reorganized SAMHSA is closely aligned with the medical side of HHS programs including the Bureau of Primary Health Care, so that mental health priorities support physical health priorities and visa versa.
     
2. Support Medication & Non-Medication, Evidence-Based Approaches to Mental Health, Substance Use & Health Behavior Change
   • Fund flexible models of care that are not locked into specialty or high-threshold services. Our members are showing that you can treat substance use and mental health issues in primary care today—if you support that infrastructure.
   • Encourage HHS to revise regulations that make it harder to offer brief, early interventions or embed behavioral health providers where they’re most needed (and encourage states to do the same!). For example, annual behavioral health wellness visits should be reimbursable across the lifespan.
     
3. Invest in Person-Centered, Data-Informed Care
   • Support the use of measurement-based care (MBC), which allows providers to track symptoms over time, improve quality, and avoid unnecessary treatments.
   • Fund technology that supports behavioral health labs—routine assessments just like bloodwork—to inform care in real time and empower patients. Non-medical interventions will sky-rocket if you pay for monitoring of behavioral interventions.

What You Can Do

• Direct HHS to prioritize integration in every health reform initiative—especially in mental health, pediatric + maternal health, and chronic disease management.
• Incentivize academic training programs to prepare professionals specifically for integrated care roles.
• Launch a “moonshot” workforce initiative for integrated behavioral health, modeled after successful primary care transformation programs.

Why It Matters Now

The current system isn’t built for connection—it’s built for transactions. You want to build a system of care that heals at the root, that listens, that empowers. Integrated care is already doing that—and we’re ready to help scale it nationwide.

You don’t have to build it from scratch. We’re already doing it in places like community health centers in New Mexico, rural clinics in North Carolina, and urban hospital systems in Chicago. What we need is leadership that understands how small, connected care teams can transform whole communities.

We hope you’ll make integrated care a priority in your HHS agenda—not because it’s trendy, but because it works.

Sincerely,
Neftali Serrano, PsyD
CEO, Collaborative Family Healthcare Association
www.cfha.net

P.S. For another great take on the MAHA Commission, see this piece by Dr. Dost Öngür.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash