2

Health System
Transformation

2025

HIGHLIGHTS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS

The Meadows Institute is helping redesign and build health systems across Texas and the nation so every person can find mental health support in a familiar place: their regular doctor’s office. By integrating behavioral health care into pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine, and obstetrics, we are helping tens of millions of Americans get timely, evidence-backed help for mental health conditions during their regular annual check-ups, just like we do for heart disease and cancer.

“By bridging policy, practice, and technical expertise, the Meadows Institute is uniquely positioned to lead collaborative care’s breakthrough moment.”

— Clare McNutt, SVP for health system integration

Adoption of the Collaborative Care Model in the U.S. increased 10x from 2018 to 2023.

Collaborative Care Heats Up

The evidence-based model we most often help systems build is the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM), widely considered the gold standard for integrated care. Under this approach, family doctors and pediatricians no longer have to offer help alone in their offices. Instead, they are joined by behavioral health specialists and dedicated psychiatrists working together to detect mental health needs years earlier than usual and treat common conditions like depression and anxiety on the spot during the primary care visit.

 

After a decade of championing CoCM, we commissioned the first-ever study to learn how and where the model has gained traction nationwide. On behalf of the West Health Institute and the Path Forward coalition, we analyzed data representing more than 200 million Americans. The resulting Collaborative Care Heat Map shows the remarkable progress made across the country since we began promoting effective, sustainable approaches to integrated care, and also highlights opportunities to improve adoption.

Taking Collaborative Care National

The Meadows Institute’s success in expanding access to and improving the quality of mental health care in Texas through our Lone Star Depression Challenge (LSDC) has inspired similar initiatives across the country. In only four years, the LSDC, made possible by Lyda Hill Philanthropies, set a standard of helping millions of people recover from depression and preventing suicide through collaborative care.

 

  • The Meadows Institute partnered with three health systems in Westchester County, New York, to lay the groundwork for pediatric collaborative care, so families can find mental health support right in their children’s doctors’ offices.
  • We worked together with West Health and Northwestern Medicine to implement collaborative care for more than 350,000 patients, training behavioral health care managers and simplifying workflows across more than 70 medical practices. The Meadows Institute is sharing insights from the three-year Northwestern Medicine West Health Accelerator to speed up regional and national expansion of collaborative care.
  • We helped launch the new dedicated collaborative care component of the national Center of Excellence for Integrated Health Solutions (CIHS). Over the next five years, the Meadows Institute will train more than 40,000 practitioners in CoCM best practices as part of this groundbreaking national effort supported by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and led by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing.

Housing Meets Healing

Mental health and homelessness are deeply connected, yet attempts to find solutions often occur in silos. The Meadows Institute — alongside Housing Forward North Texas, the All Neighbors Coalition, and the North Texas Behavioral Health Authority — has gained national recognition for breaking down those silos and creating real results.


The Street-to-Home initiative brings life-changing mental health and housing resources directly to people living on Dallas streets and in homeless encampments, particularly those who live with serious mental illness and substance use disorders. Our collaboration with Housing Forward helps these people move into permanent housing while addressing their underlying mental health needs, giving them a better chance at leading healthy, productive lives.


Meadows Institute experts met with senior White House officials to offer guidance on replicating the Street-to-Home model nationwide. Inspired by solutions like Dallas’ program — described in this op-ed published in the Dallas Morning News — the federal government is developing a new approach to ending chronic homelessness with more assertive mental health supports like those we helped Housing Forward design.

The 89th Texas Legislature allotted $38 million for the Healthy Community Collaboratives to provide services to people experiencing homelessness, substance abuse, or mental illness, a $5 million increase from the previous session.

Street-to-Home has helped more than 250 people in Dallas transition from homelessness to stable housing with behavioral health support.

“Lasting change starts when housing and mental health care come together — because people can’t heal without a home, and they can’t keep a home without healing.”

— Darilynn Cardona-Beiler, SVP for specialty health care

Dallas has reduced unsheltered homelessness by 24% since 2021.