State officials have announced that more than $17 million is being committed to mental health and addictions services across the state.
N.C. Dep. of Health and Human Services said the funds will help bolster North Carolina’s Rural Health Transformation Program (NCRHTP).
“Every North Carolinian deserves the opportunity to live a healthy and fulfilling life,” said Gov. Josh Stein. “Nearly 1.5 million North Carolinians struggle with mental health issues, and too many people in rural areas cannot access the care they need. These investments will connect more families to high-quality care in their communities.”
Among the projects being funded is $3 million of NCRHTP funding to establish stationary medication units co-locating opioid treatment with primary care to expand Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) access.
This funding will be used to support the implementation of Zing Satellite Technology to expand OTP services in combination with primary care in Columbus, Graham, Rutherford, Cumberland and Bertie. These OTP expansion units will expand OTP services as part of the MOUD Saturation plan, managed by NCDHHS. The state said the expansion will help meet the goal of reducing the number of opioid overdoses in emergency departments by 20 percent in 2031. The state recently announced it had approved the 100th brick-and-mortar OTP location.
NCDHHS received more than $213 million in federal funding for the 2026-27 fiscal year from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the NCRHTP to improve health outcomes for the state’s more than 3.5 million rural residents, the second-largest rural population in the country. A key initiative of the NCRHTP is expanding behavioral health care and substance use services.
This wave of funding includes:
- $4 million for Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics
- $3 million to expand Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) Access
- $4 million to expand Mobile Outreach, Response, Engagement, and Stabilization teams
- $3 million for Coordinated Specialty Care for First-Episode Psychosis response
- $2.9 million to establish regional Rural Crisis Partnerships
- $800,000 to expand NC MATTERS
“There is no health without mental health,” said NC Health and Human Services Secretary Dev Sangvai. “Our goal is to build a comprehensive system that delivers high-quality services to residents no matter where they live. These initiatives expand access to care and support whole-person well-being, directly advancing the NCDHHS mission to provide essential services that improve the health, safety, and well-being of all North Carolinians while developing a sustainable healthcare workforce for the future.”
NCDHHS has awarded $4 million to three Local Management Entities/Managed Care Organizations (LME/MCOs) for Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs). These facilities provide comprehensive mental health and substance use care under one roof – serving anyone who requests care, regardless of ability to pay, place of residence, or age. CCBHCs served more than 21,000 people in 2024-25 and aim to increase the number of Medicaid recipients who begin mental health treatment by five percent each year and reduce the number of emergency department visits by people who need mental health services by eight to ten percent each year.
Two separate awards will improve services for children, including $4 million to expand Mobile Outreach, Response, Engagement and Stabilization (MORES) teams to Beaufort, Edgecombe, Greene, Polk, Transylvania and Wilkes counties while strengthening existing teams in numerous counties. MORES is a team-based crisis response intervention for children and adolescents ages 3 to 21 experiencing escalating emotional and/or behavioral needs. MORES seeks to reduce admissions to emergency departments and long-term placements in residential settings by supporting youth in their homes and communities for up to eight weeks.
In addition, NCDHHS is providing $3 million for Coordinated Specialty Care for First Episode Psychosis (CSC) response. CSC is a team-based, early intervention for young people experiencing early psychosis. The state will implement a rural adaptation of CSC that will include a Hub & Spoke Model that incorporates tele-psychiatry with community-based teams to reduce geographic barriers.
NCDHHS will put forth $2.9 million in funding to improve response to – and help prevent – mental health crises in rural areas by establishing regional Rural Crisis Partnerships between CCBHCs and their local Behavioral Health Urgent Cares and Peer Operated Respite centers. These partnerships will ensure someone in crisis receives the appropriate level of care and will help divert people from emergency departments.
NCDHHS will also use $800,000 per year from NCRHTP funding to expand the NC MATTERS program to provide more intensive, locally tailored support in rural communities. NC MATTERS is North Carolina’s Perinatal Psychiatry Access Program, created to support health care professionals with identifying and managing their perinatal patients’ behavioral health in communities where appropriate services are scarce.
This program is a federally funded collaboration among NCDHHS, UNC, and Duke. The NCRHTP investment will allow NCDHHS to work more closely with local health care systems to understand their particular gaps and build solutions around them.
On Sept. 14, NCDHHS announced $1.25 million in NCRHTP funding for school-based health centers to expand preventive and acute health care, provide nutrition support, and address behavioral health needs. In the spring, NCDHHS announced it will provide $10 million to 39 local EMS agencies through the NCRHTP to strengthen the EMS workforce and expand rural communities’ access to mental health and substance use disorder treatment and services.
