3
Justice and Health
2025
HIGHLIGHTS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS
When disaster strikes, first responders rush in — and the Meadows Institute steps up to support them.
This year, we bolstered mental health care for first responders while boosting their ability to serve Texas communities. From the devastation of the Central Texas floods to reforming 911 call response, our data-driven programs delivered quick, effective, and personalized care, training, and resources for first responders and the people they serve.
From Response to Recovery
When the Hill Country floods swept through our communities, the Meadows Institute mobilized immediately to support the first responders running toward danger. Because we have earned a reputation as a trusted partner for ensuring a healthy first-responder workforce, Texas agencies quickly turned to us for help.
On the same day tragedy struck, experts from the Meadows Institute began guiding and supporting Central Texas leaders and the 3,000 firefighters, paramedics, park rangers, Department of Public Safety troopers, and other first responders risking their own safety to rescue and recover people in crises. We drew on our years of experience caring for communities facing disasters and helped people access tailored and effective mental health care.
We rapidly expanded our signature Texas Blue Chip Program beyond law enforcement to include all first responders who answered the call to help. At the request of the Texas Municipal Police Association, we distributed physical and digital blue “poker chips” to emergency command centers across the flood region. Recovery workers confronting loss and grief could use them to obtain confidential, no-cost clinical mental health care and trauma support.
“When we put a Blue Chip in a police officer’s hand out in the flood zone, and he’s just recovered a lost little soul, and he’s tired, and he’s hot, and his uniform is torn up from the thorns, and his head hurts from dehydration, he knows, ‘Help is there for me.’”
— B.J. Wagner, executive vice president for health and public safety
Since the floods, the Blue Chip program has provided law enforcement officers with 700 trauma-informed counseling sessions.
The Caruth Police Institute trained 500 police leaders to prioritize community health, wellness, and safety.
Communities across the nation look to North Texas for leadership, and the police departments of five of the country’s largest cities sought out CPI’s expertise on operational and systems management.
The Meadows Institute launched the Caruth Police Institute’s new Executive Advisory Board to harness the combined expertise of Texas leaders alongside 25 of the nation’s top public safety experts from cities including Minneapolis, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Miami Beach, and Alexandria, Virginia.
Building Stronger Leaders for Safer Communities
In 2025, the Meadows Institute stepped in to steward Texas’ flagship police training program, the Caruth Police Institute (CPI), preserving the Dallas Police Department’s ability to train its officers with excellence. We identified a new university home at Dallas College and strengthened academic partnerships to provide criminal justice students and interns with real-world education and mentorship from top policing and public health experts. We enhanced CPI’s curriculum with policy research and mental health resources, and incorporated innovative courses for both police and civilian public safety professionals. And we laid the strategic groundwork for continued growth in law enforcement training.
Leading the Nation in Putting First Responders First
The success of the Texas Law Enforcement Peer Network inspired the passage of House Bill 35, making Texas the first state with an open-access, state-funded peer network for first responders. The Texas Peer Support Network for First Responders is modeled on the Meadows Institute’s design and connects firefighters, police officers, and paramedics with immediate peer-to-peer mental health care. Officers anonymously request a peer via smartphone app, ensuring timely, confidential support.
Meadows Institute data show that nearly 65% of all 911 calls about public disturbances involve someone experiencing an unmet mental health need.
Reforming 911 Response with a Decade of Data
The Meadows Institute is the only organization that has tracked behavioral health emergency response over the course of an entire decade. This unparalleled dataset, which collected data from 43 jurisdictions in Texas and four other states from 2015 to 2025, allows us to identify 911 calls rooted in behavioral health emergencies and guide public safety agencies to dispatch the right kind of help. The ability to recognize a mental health need before officers arrive on scene improves safety for everyone.
Multidisciplinary crisis response teams reduce unnecessary ambulance or police transports by nearly 30%, lower arrests and use-of-force incidents, and ensure people in crisis receive appropriate care.
Setting the Standard for Mental Health Emergency Response
Together with the Marron Institute at NYU, the Meadows Institute is bringing our successful approach to improving 911 response nationwide. The Behavioral Health Emergency Response Initiative (BHERi) aims to apply our training model in communities throughout the country, helping 911 dispatchers recognize mental health emergencies and provide the right kind of response. With generous funding from Blue Meridian Partners, BHERi will improve responses to the 48 million 911 calls each year involving behavioral health crises so that Americans experiencing a mental health crisis avoid arrest or an ER visit and receive a safe, effective, and dignified response.
Transforming Rural Mental Health Response
Rural communities often lack sufficient resources to respond to behavioral health emergencies. And the professionals who do respond to rural mental health crises — directing people to care instead of hospitalization or arrest — lack practical guidance to overcome the unique challenges of rural environments.
With support from a grant from the Office of the Governor, the Meadows Institute filled this gap by creating a first-of-its-kind interactive guide for rural crisis services providers. The toolkit offers creative strategies and resources to build trust within communities, increase public awareness of available services, address clinical workforce shortages, and improve 911 call response to behavioral health emergencies.
“As a result of the support from the Meadows Institute, I feel far more confident knowing my officers understand what they’re walking into — and that we can truly serve our community by sending the right behavioral health response.”
— Steve Dye, chief of the Allen Police Department
The Meadows Institute unveiled the rural crisis response toolkit to all
39 Local Mental Health Authorities in Texas, 31 of which serve the 7.6 million Texans who live in rural communities.