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Federal grant to help Alabama expand telehealth access to additional 37,000 Alabamians

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Department of Mental Health Commissioner Kim Boswell announced Friday that her agency had been awarded a $118,000 federal grant to expand telehealth services to the state’s rural communities, an expansion that’s estimated to impact more than 37,000 Alabamians.

Awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the grant will be used to fund the ADMH Telehealth Expansion Project, a strategic initiative designed to reduce health disparities between Alabama’s urban and rural communities.

“We do know that the need is great in our state; more than 43% of Alabamians reside in a rural community, with a significant number facing gaps in behavioral health care,” Boswell said at a press conference in Montgomery. 

“We know that in Alabama, there are 850 individuals for one behavioral health care provider in our state; that’s (a) significantly higher (difference) than the national average. We know in our rural communities, the number of individuals per provider is even larger, and 13% of our rural communities do not have a single behavioral health care provider.”

Telehealth equipment companies will have until April 12 to respond to a request for proposal published by the ADMH, after which the selected companies will work in tandem with several health care providers that have partnered with the ADMH on the telehealth expansion project.

Nivory Gordon, rural development state director for Alabama with the USDA, joined Boswell at the press conference, and shared a few words on what he considered to be the importance of improving mental health resources in rural communities.

“You don’t realize a crisis until you’re there, and certainly what you’re doing to enhance the lives across our state is very much needed,” Gordon said. 

“It’s a small investment, but certainly every effort that we make to change the lives of individuals that we serve every day from a public health standpoint, we’re certainly proud to do that.”

Nivory Gordon, rural development state director for Alabama with the USDA, speaks at a press conference in Montgomery.

The ADMH will contribute a $17,000 match to the federal grant, bringing the total amount of money to be directed toward expanding telehealth to $135,000. The bulk of the spending, ADMH spokesperson Malissa Valdes told Alabama Daily News, would be for the purchases of telehealth equipment.

Boswell said that the telehealth expansion project would also be a useful tool in helping to combat the opioid epidemic, with opioid addiction often more prevalent in rural communities.

“This project will utilize telehealth to bridge the gaps in treatment and health care services to combat our growing opioid epidemic in our state, including substance abuse disorder and mental health disorders in some of our most rural and poor communities,” Boswell said. 

“This project will serve over 37,000 Alabamians; that is really exciting for our state.”

Alabama lawmakers and leaders have strongly advocated for improving the state’s mental health resources in recent years, with State House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, having named expanding mental health resources as among his top legislative priorities for 2024.

A recent poll has shown that a majority of Alabamians held a poor perception of both the quality and accessibility of mental health resources in the state, with a majority also indicating that they would be in favor of more state dollars being directed toward improving those resources.

Mental health care providers have urged state leaders to consider allocating portions of revenue from future gambling legislation or opioid settlement funds towards mental health resources.

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