King County is pleased to announce that the MIDD Behavioral Health Sales Tax Fund has released its data dashboard and Summary Report.
The Summary Report provides an overview of the MIDD’s performance in 2022 and the complementary online MIDD data dashboard provides more comprehensive results and initiative-level details.
King County’s MIDD Behavioral Health Sales Tax Fund supports positive health outcomes for people throughout King County by investing in community behavioral health programs ranging from prevention and early intervention to crisis diversion and recovery services.
MIDD plays a critical role in King County’s strategy to increase access to mental health and substance use disorder services as a local fund source created to address behavioral health needs that otherwise go unmet by state and federal resources. Since 2008, MIDD has funded high-quality programs and services that, collectively, reduce reliance on jails, emergency rooms, and hospitals, and create connections to care for King County residents most in need.
2022 Data Dashboard is Live!
To fully explore MIDD’s overall results, visit the interactive MIDD data dashboard at kingcounty.gov/MIDDDashboard
MIDD in 2022
MIDD partnered with 157 community partners and served 19,281 people across King County through 52 initiatives.
In 2022, MIDD continued its two-decade record of supporting people to recover from behavioral health conditions in the community, improve wellness, and reduce the use of costly and often traumatic interventions like jail and hospitals. In the report, we are pleased to highlight how MIDD continues to be integral to the behavioral health system and moves the system closer to meeting residents’ needs.
MIDD-funded investments serve a foundational role within the system and, at the same time, many of King County’s most nimble responses to behavioral health need in communities across the county were made possible by MIDD funds, including expanded access to next day appointments for substance use disorder, peer strategies to help people navigate their return to community after a psychiatric hospitalization, increased distribution of life-saving naloxone, and direct outreach to youth and adults experiencing homelessness in an effort to bring low-barrier treatment directly to people in need.
MIDD also funded upstream interventions to prevent or intervene early when behavioral health needs arise, keeping common and treatable challenges from growing into crises. MIDD initiatives help fill a need in the overall system that bolsters community-based response and helps communities heal from trauma, build coping skills, and utilize resources to stay well.
Explore the summary report which provides the MIDD fund’s overarching 2022 results and describes outcomes from each of MIDD’s strategy areas. It also includes discussion and data about key themes from the implementation of MIDD in 2022, such as the importance of meeting people where they are in the community, systemic challenges directly impacting the workforce, the importance of peers with lived experience, and the large returns on upstream investments in youth mental health.
Key Themes from MIDD in 2022
Meeting people where they are
Over 4,800 people were engaged by MIDD-funded outreach programs, including Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD), mobile crisis teams, or Medication for Opioid Used Disorder (MOUD) in shelters and encampments. These programs are central to King County’s response to the fentanyl and overdose crisis.
Meeting people where they are located in the community increased participants’ engagement with programs and services and greatly reduced interactions with costly systems. Collectively, MIDD-funded outreach programs contributed to the following outcomes:
Behavioral health workers and providers faced systemic challenges
Across the spectrum from prevention to crisis intervention, the two most widespread challenges MIDD providers faced in 2022 were:
- A workforce strained under the magnitude of the need without the wages or supports to help sustain and retain workers
- Growing demand for services and higher acuity of need
Community-based providers facilitate and support recovery and stability for King County residents, yet chronic underinvestment in the behavioral health system creates and perpetuates structural challenges. MIDD supported providers with a seven percent economic adjustment in 2022, and MIDD System Improvement strategies provided additional funding to enable providers to outreach and engage vulnerable and hard-to-reach clients.
Peers make a difference
MIDD peer strategies served over 1,100 people in 2022. Peers are people who have lived experience in the recovery journey who can support others navigating similar situations. Peers can be an essential part of a multidisciplinary team in combination with clinicians. By bringing their shared understanding, respect, insight into navigating systems, and other challenges, peers can foster relationships that change lives.
Investing in youth mental health and preventing crises
Over 1,000 youth were engaged in MIDD-funded services ranging from crisis outreach to wraparound supports. The importance of MIDD’s investments upstream to intervene early on with youth facing behavioral health challenges in King County is underscored by the U.S. Surgeon General’s rare public health advisory issued in late 2021 about the growing mental health crisis, with feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors increasing by about 40 percent among young people in the ten years leading up to the pandemic.
Housing leads to increased stability
More than 1,000 people received housing support through MIDD-funded activities, including housing vouchers, rapid rehousing for people in early recovery, investments in construction and preservation of housing for individuals with behavioral health conditions and very low incomes.
Read the 2022 MIDD Summary Report here and explore MIDD’s interactive data dashboard at kingcounty.gov/MIDDDashboard to see MIDD’s results in 2022 in full.
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