Featured Stories of Faith Partnerships in Action

With a shared commitment to partnership, service, and community well-being, SAMHSA is deepening its collaboration with faith-based entities, community organizations, and houses of worship to expand hope, healing, and access to behavioral health support in communities across the country.

Bolstering Faith-Based Capacity in Substance Abuse Prevention

Bolstering Faith-Based Capacity in Substance Abuse Prevention

Bolstering Faith-Based Capacity in Substance Abuse Prevention

Faith leaders have always been trusted voices in their communities. People and families turn to them in hard times. Now, thanks to new supplemental funding from SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP), that trust is being turned into a powerful tool on the front lines of the fight against substance abuse.

Before this funding, faith communities in Kansas, West Virginia, and Alabama had the relationships and the reach, but not always the tools, training, or formal partnerships to plug into statewide prevention efforts. SAMHSA saw an opportunity to give these communities the resources to turn long-standing trust into life-saving prevention.

In Kansas and West Virginia, this funding is being used to walk the faith communities step-by-step through the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF), building partnerships, conducting needs assessments, and co-developing strategic plans with faith leaders all while engaging youth in the process from day one.

In Alabama, the momentum is already impressive. The Agency for Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) runs a 16-hour Faith-Based Support Specialist (FBSS) certification program, approved by the Alabama Department of Mental Health to train faith leaders to recognize and respond to mental health and substance use challenges.

Since launching in March 2022, the FBSS program has hosted conferences in every region of the state and certified more than 600 faith leaders. The new SAMHSA supplemental funds will power regional needs assessment to explore how faith-based prevention shapes youth attitudes, and where additional resources are needed.

Three states with one shared strategy: equip the people that communities already trust with the skills to save lives. With Alabama's Department of Mental Health, Kansas's KDADS, and West Virginia's Bureau for Behavioral Health leading as SPF-PFS grantees, faith communities are becoming a formal, funded, and growing part of the prevention workforce, extending our reach to youth and families.

The Alabama Department of Mental Health, Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS), and the West Virginia Dept. of Human Services, Bureau for Behavioral Health are Strategic Prevention Framework—Partnerships for Success (SPF-PFS) state grantees.

When the Community Already Knows What It Needs

When the Community Already Knows What It Needs

Office of Faith Based Initiatives at the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services

The Office of Faith Based Initiatives at the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services is demonstrating the power of faith-based initiatives to bring recovery services to people in need, supported in part through SAMHSA block grant funding. The department has coordinators around the state who are all themselves in recovery, and together they are referring an average of 400 people a month to treatment and recovery services, including many who are uninsured and lack options for getting help.

Across Tennessee, the faith-based coordinators have trained nearly 1,200 faith communities and congregations and more than 300 active certified faith-based recovery partners statewide, many in the rural counties that need them most.

When one of the teams showed up in Pikeville, Tennessee, word spread within the hour. Local leaders began reaching out, one after another. By the end of the day, the state team had begun coordinating a meeting with every clergy leader in the city, a meeting that would become the beginning of a faith-based recovery coalition the community would build and lead itself.

Tennessee's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services operates a statewide faith-based initiative supported in part through SAMHSA block grant funding.

When the Storm Passed, the Doors Were Still Open - Western North Carolina

When the Storm Passed, the Doors Were Still Open - Western North Carolina

How faith communities became the backbone of disaster response in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.

When the Storm Passed, the Doors Were Still Open

Nobody plans for a hurricane to change everything. But on September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina. Power lines went down. Cell service disappeared. What the storm could not take was the network of faith communities that had been serving their neighbors long before it arrived.

In the months that followed, Hope4NC crisis counseling teams deployed across all 39 affected counties — meeting survivors where they were. Often, that was in a church.

At Clyde Methodist Church in Clyde, North Carolina, neighbors could find a meal, a coat, and someone to talk to. When Hope4NC staff visited, the clothing closet was running low on coats and cold-weather items for children. The team gathered donations from their own homes, partnered with a local recovery center to collect more, and restocked the closet by end of day.

That is what it looks like when partnership shows up with its sleeves rolled up.

North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) received federal funding through SAMHSA's Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program to support Hope4NC. Hope4NC serves all 39 counties affected by Hurricane Helene, providing free, anonymous, community-based crisis counseling and support to survivors.

When Faith Communities Become the Safety Net: The Blessing Bag Homeless Initiative

When Faith Communities Become the Safety Net: The Blessing Bag Homeless Initiative - Ocean City, NJ

Blessing Bags

In Ocean County, New Jersey, communities in the southern half of the county faced real barriers to housing, mental health care, and substance use services. A network of faith leaders and community partners had the trust, the relationships, and the will to help.

In 2021, RWJBarnabas Health Institute for Prevention and Recovery brought that network together as the SOCIAL Network — 33 congregations and faith-based organizations, more than 100 active members, and partners from local law enforcement, schools, and recovery agencies across the county.

And then there are the Blessing Bags.

Three hundred bags filled with cold-weather essentials and resource bracelets, hand-delivered to people experiencing homelessness. Through a text-based app, people in need were connected to resources 486 times. Not through a helpline or a clinic but through a network of congregations and faith-based organizations that show up like they always have.

That is what it looks like when faith communities are engaged as the leaders that they are.

RWJBarnabas Health Institute for Prevention and Recovery is a Strategic Prevention Framework—Partnerships for Success (SPF-PFS) grantee serving Ocean County, New Jersey.

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