SB3501 Summary

• Creates the Behavioral Health Workforce Education Center of Illinois to address critical shortages of behavioral health professionals by leveraging state, federal, and foundation resources for workforce development and training.

• Center shall be administered by a public institution of higher education as a multisite model with a hub institution and secondary regional hubs serving rural, small urban, and densely urban areas with over 1,000,000 inhabitants.

• Center duties include organizing university-provider consortiums, developing strategic recruitment and retention plans, collecting workforce data, creating career pipelines from high schools through specialization, and disseminating evidence-based practices.

• Board of Higher Education must select the administering institution within 90 days of the bill's enactment, with the Center operational by July 1, 2021, and must submit biennial activity reports to the General Assembly by December 1 of odd-numbered years.

• Addresses findings that Illinois ranks 29th nationally in mental health workforce availability, with suicide rates disproportionately high among African American youth and nearly 800,000 people annually unable to access substance use disorder treatment.