Hey everyone,
This one's a little different from my usual posts. I wanted to step out from behind the newsletter and actually introduce myself.
My name is Noah Weinberg. For the last two years, my focus has been on alternative response, co-response, crisis intervention teams, and MIH-CP. The programs that put clinicians and specially trained officers toward the calls that patrol alone was never built to handle.
Most of what I know didn't come from a report. It came from talking to the people doing the work. I've spent years collecting stories from clinicians riding along on co-response calls and CIT-trained officers across the US and Canada. A call that de-escalates because someone with the right training showed up. A repeat caller who finally gets connected to care instead of cycling through the system. A department that redesigns its whole response model around what actually works. Those details tell you more about whether a program is working than any dashboard does.
I produce a lot of free industry content for Julota, our newsfeed, case studies, microsites. None of it has been as personal to me as this newsletter.
Where this is headed
Writing Badges & Behavioral Health with a journalistic lens, the operational reality, the funding, the launches, the growing pains, has been some of the most energizing work I do. And this isn't the end of that. I want to tell you what's coming.
I want Badges & Behavioral Health to stop being just a place that reports news and start being a resource hub for co-response, CIT, and behavioral health professionals. If you want to know when the next conference is, what trends are picking up steam, where the open positions are, this should be the one place you check.
The stories you're used to will stay. But I'm going to start experimenting with some of the tools I've been building on the Julota side:
— Funding roundups
— Reader polls
— Statistic-driven posts
What I need from you
I want your voices in front of this newsletter more than they've ever been. I'm opening this up to guest postings. If you've got a program story, an idea, or you just want to talk through where this is headed, book time with me here:
Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn HERE.
Excited for where this goes.
Cheers,
Noah
