The New Frontier

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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Preface

Advancements in biotechnology, bioengineering, neuroscience, genetics and other medical specialties have dramatically altered the way people are diagnosed and treated for injury or disease. These advancements promise to continue at unprecedented rates of discovery. Along the way, bioethicists, philosophers, politicians, medical practitioners and other professionals will debate the numerous and very complex ethical, financial and service delivery issues inherent in each new development.

While discussion has already begun on these issues within the medical field, very little attention has been given to the potential for these advancements to impact a parallel field: nonprofit behavioral health services. These providers — many operating under traditional social service models — provide a multitude of services aligned to medicine, including mental health and substance abuse counseling.

This report, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is the first effort of a multiyear project that focuses on exploring how advancements in neuroscience will impact the abilities of nonprofit human service providers to organize and deliver behavioral health services in the future. Two questions framed the paper's development and organization:

What neuroscience diagnostic and treatment advancements have occurred which are likely to impact nonprofit human service providers? Three areas were targeted for this examination: pharmaceutical, surgical and biomedical.

What is likely to change in response to these advancements? Capacities of nonprofits explored in this area included clinical, institutional/systemic and societal roles.

The answers to these questions will in turn, we expect, foster another set of critical questions for the nonprofit behavioral health care field: How will agencies create or set strategies for growth when rapidly emerging neuroscience advancements will demand the ability to react quickly to new opportunities? How will they capitalize new technological and neuroscientific functions required for behavioral health diagnostic and treatment strategies? Will the human services field undergo dramatic reorganization as smaller and less adept agencies go out of business and larger, more technically sophisticated agencies gain a greater share of the behavioral health market through partnerships with scientific or medical professions? What public policy strategies will be required to support the integration of neuroscience advancements with traditional social service behavioral health care models?

The Alliance for Children and Families is pleased to publish this pioneering analysis of the impact of neuroscience advancements on nonprofit behavioral health care. We hope the information presented here serves as a stimulus for a thoughtful and provocative discussion on the integration of neuroscience advancements with traditional social services. We are committed to remaining a leader in this important and timely dialogue.

Peter B. Goldberg
President and Chief Executive Officer

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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