Public Health 3.0: Supporting Local Public Health in Addressing Behavioral Health

For the first time in generations, life expectancy in the United States is declining.1 It is driven in large part by behavioral health challenges manifesting in the opioid epidemic and troubling rises in suicide.2,3 Communities across the country struggle to absorb the heavy tolls of behavioral and mental health on their well-being and economy. MODERNIZING PUBLIC HEALTH Across the nation, local health departments have risen to meet complex challenges such as the opioid epidemic by pioneering, innovating, and transforming on the front lines to address the full range of factors that influence a person's health-from good schools to safe environments, stable housing to transportation, economic development to access to healthy foods. In a 2016 report, Public Health 3.0: A Call to Action for Public Health to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century, the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, recommended five essential qualities for every community to achieve health for all: 1.