Project Grant H79SM091676

The Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded Cherokee Nation $750,000 on September 30, 2026, under the Center for Mental Health Services Projects of Regional and National Significance program (CFDA 93.532) to establish a behavioral health practitioner-only mobile crisis team across the Cherokee Nation Reservation.

The mobile crisis team will deliver 24/7/365 crisis response service across the 6,950-square-mile, 14-county reservation in northeastern Oklahoma, serving a population of 521,336 residents with particular attention to rural residents, children and families, veterans, and individuals with limited access to transportation or insurance. The project addresses a critical gap: Cherokee Nation Behavioral Health currently has no trained behavioral health responder workforce and no alternative to law enforcement for mental health and substance use crises. Existing crisis care is clinic-bound, limited to business hours, and ends without follow-up. Long driving distances—some exceeding one hour to the nearest emergency department—compound these gaps for approximately 263,000 residents in rural areas. The grant will fund workforce development, protocol establishment, and partnership building to launch and sustain the independent mobile crisis service. The population of focus includes children, youth, and adults experiencing mental health or substance use disorder crises. An estimated 22,800 adults in the catchment area experience serious mental illness, 89,200 experience any mental illness, and 10,900 meet criteria for co-occurring substance use disorder and serious mental illness annually. Twelve of the fourteen counties exceed the state's adult incarceration rate, reflecting how often unaddressed behavioral health crises resolve through the justice system rather than clinical care.

Performance takes place in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with the award period running through September 29, 2030.