Hidalgo County Part of Region Six Planning Ahead of $24.4M Awards

The state planned to announce this week regional early access awards totaling $24.4 million to support immediate behavioral health needs, and Hidalgo County is part of Region Six preparing to direct those funds toward locally identified priorities.

Senate Bill 3, known as the Behavioral Health Reform and Investment Act, reshaped New Mexico’s treatment systems by creating 13 behavioral health regions aligned with the state’s judicial districts. The Administrative Office of the Courts is overseeing implementation through accountability entities in each region, and the legislation calls for counties, municipalities, community health organizations and Native American nations to work together to identify needs and gaps.

Region Six, which comprises Grant, Luna and Hidalgo counties, has organized leadership for the process under Luna County Manager Chris Brice and behavioral health coordinator Heather Edwards. The region is still early in planning, Edwards said: “Because it’s a landmark bill, nobody has really known how it’s going to work. So there’s a lot of things to figure out.”

State officials framed the early access awards as a way to put decision-making closer to communities delivering care. “This funding puts decisions closer to the communities delivering care,” Kari Armijo, secretary of the Health Care Authority, said. “It gives communities the ability to act now, expand services earlier and faster, and meet people where they are.”

Each region’s early access award will target one of four immediate priorities: residential treatment, crisis intervention, medication-assisted treatment for the incarcerated, or substance abuse programs for pregnant women and new mothers. Awards letters were expected to go out later this week, according to a Health Care Authority spokesperson, and Edwards said she did not yet know what amount Region Six might receive.

Beyond the short-term awards, Region Six is preparing a required workshop to build an Enhanced Sequential Intercept Model, or E-SIM, a community-based map designed to get people into treatment before they enter the criminal justice system. Six regions have completed their workshops, and Region Six will hold its session in early March. Edwards said the workshop will help the region “map things that we have in place and what we’re missing, and then at the end of that, we’re going to have five priorities that we’ve narrowed down.”

Edwards expects about 100 representatives at the workshop, drawing mental health providers, schools, law enforcement, county managers and religious leaders from all three counties. For Hidalgo County residents, the process aims to improve access to critical services that often lag in rural areas - from crisis response to continuity of care for people released from jail, and targeted support for pregnant women and new mothers facing substance use disorders.

As Region Six moves from planning to action, the immediate attention will be on which of the four priority areas receives early funding and how those dollars are deployed across Hidalgo, Grant and Luna counties. Residents can expect more detailed local plans to emerge after the awards are announced and the March E-SIM workshop produces a narrowed list of priorities and an implementation roadmap.