JULY 2023 – Today, July 16, 2023, marks the one-year anniversary of 988, the new three-digit number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. Its existence is the result of years of advocacy efforts by numerous individuals and organizations, many of which the Foundation is honored to partner with and support. In a nation where mental illness continues to be criminalized, 988 offers a promising opportunity to ensure people in mental health crises receive care rather than punishment and incarceration.
JUNE 2023 – I write this under the haze of poor air quality impacting Canada and much of the United States. As I do so, I cannot help but think about climate change and its impact on our work to decriminalize mental illness. In late May, the World Health Organization issued an urgent call for global climate action to create resilient and sustainable health systems. How do we heed this call? And, importantly, what impact does this call have on our work to decriminalize mental illness?
We all exist within a built environment. Access to mental health care depends on the stability of the built environment, which – already inadequate to ensure access to care – is being further challenged by climate change.
How do we begin to address these issues?
MAY 2023 - The Sozosei Foundation launched in the months before the pandemic hit. I took my seat as the inaugural Executive Director in the pandemic’s early days – June 2020. Our focus then, as it is now, is on the decriminalization of mental illness. To us, this focus has evolved into a clear goal: to increase access to mental health care in communities so as to eliminate the inappropriate use of jails and prisons for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.
The mental health impacts of COVID have validated the importance of our goal, and, as many of you know, we are spending much of this year asking ourselves how and if our work is getting us any closer to the decriminalization of mental illness. With this newsletter, I am happy to share a bit of what we are learning so far, including: the challenge of measuring impact, the importance of staying focused while working on a complex issue, the role of convenings in meeting our goal, and the power of collaboration. I’ll take these in order.
Correctional facilities in the US are considered the largest provider of mental health services.1 The Sozosei Foundation is tackling the question—"What can be done to accelerate solutions so that we eliminate the inappropriate use of jails and prisons for mental health care?” But tackling the criminalization of mental illness is complex and there is no single solution or ‘magic bullet’ to eliminate the use of jail or prison for the treatment of people with mental illness. Identifying effective solutions is difficult, in part, due to the limited availability of data needed to evaluate whether solutions work.
To understand the Sozosei Foundation’s approach to impact, a team from the RAND Corporation interviewed grantees, representatives from partner organizations and thought leaders; reviewed scientific and grey literature; and met bi-weekly with the Foundation’s Executive Director. This document summarizes what the RAND team learned about the Foundation’s approach to impact and an evaluation strategy that aligns with this approach.
The Sozosei Foundation launched its Resilient Communities Program (RCP) in the summer of 2020 at the request of Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc. (OAPI), with the intent of evolving the company’s longstanding commitment to philanthropy. The goal of the program was to refine the company’s philanthropic commitment by designing guidelines and priorities to support diverse, under-resourced communities where the company has a presence. Over the two years of its grantmaking, the program provided over $1 million in grants and served over 177,000 people across six target communities.
When COVID-19 swept across the United States in the Spring of 2020, Sozosei had just formalized its governance structure and was in the midst of a national search for its inaugural executive director. Simultaneously, Sozosei – with leadership from its Board of Directors — moved swiftly to address the immediate needs of patients, healthcare workers, and families impacted by COVID-19.