behavioral health transformation
About the County Performance Accelerator Initiative
The California Behavioral Health Transformation: County Performance Accelerator (“Performance Accelerator”) initiative aims to arm counties with the tools they need to strengthen performance, equity, transparency, and outcomes in their behavioral health systems – all while meeting new requirements under Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT) and the Behavioral Health Services Act (BHSA).
This initiative is administered by the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and managed by a team of industry experts in behavioral health policy, performance management, and performance-based contracting.
Supporting counties as they implement BHT and BHSA
The Performance Accelerator team created the Knowledge Center in response to a clear need from counties: practical guidance on how to implement BHT and BHSA requirements.
Counties are being asked to strengthen outcomes, accountability, and transparency—often while working within existing systems, limited capacity, and competing demands. The Performance Accelerator Knowledge Center supports counties in navigating that transition by providing clear, usable tools that build on what counties already have.
Our approach to developing the Knowledge Center
To create these resources, the Performance Accelerator team conducted in-depth research on the current state of California’s behavioral health system and the implementation challnges counties face under BHT and BHSA.
The project team worked closely with four counties—Butte, Colusa, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara—to ensure the tools would be practical, relevant, and adaptable across different county contexts. This included conducting county-specific needs assessments that examined contracting practices, data infrastructure, and current engagement with Boards of Supervisors.
Based on this work, the team co-developed module topics and resources focused on the areas counties identified as most critical.
The Knowledge Center will continue to evolve as counties engage with the tools and share feedback.
Meet the Performance Accelerator team
Social Finance is a national nonprofit that partners with innovators across sectors –governments, employers, investors, universities, philanthropies, nonprofits – to rewire systems and scale solutions to society’s most pressing challenges. Our Impact Advisory practice works with public sector leaders to implement data-driven practices aimed at delivering better results.
HBGI is a nonprofit organization that works with donors, governments and service providers to enhance mental health programs and systems worldwide. HBGI uses an outcomes-based approach to center individual lived experience and measure performance and impact. They work internationally, transforming and building high-performing mental health services and systems that maximize outcomes for individuals and their communities.
Steinberg Institute has been the driving force behind sweeping improvements in California behavioral health policy, including parity and 988. The Institute is dedicated to transforming California’s mental health and substance use care systems through ourVision 2030 Initiative. Our vision is to ensure that all Californians receive quality care when, where and for as long as they need it via our research, policy, and implementation work.
A message from our Accelerator Project Board members
Former Sacramento Mayor and California State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is a powerful and effective advocate for mental health care policy in California. He has been one of the most influential architects of California’s modern behavioral health system
In 2004, he co-authored the 2004 Mental Health Services Act (Proposition 63), a voter-approved initiative that established a permanent funding source for community-based mental health services statewide. Since its passage, the Act has generated tens of billions of dollars to expand prevention, treatment, housing, and workforce development across California.
Continuing his push for change a decade later, he established a first-of-its-kind statewide organization, the Steinberg Institute, dedicated to raising the profile of quality mental health care as a critical public policy and civil rights issue. His legacy reflects a lifelong commitment to dignity, recovery, and systems change.
Dr. Jonathan Sherin is a psychiatrist and neurobiologist by trade. He currently serves on multiple public and private boards to advance the health, wellbeing and connectedness of vulnerable populations both domestically and internationally.
Dr. Sherin has devoted the bulk of his career to public service. Most recently he directed the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, the largest public mental health system in the country. He also led Mental Health departments for the VA. While he is best known for driving wholesale systems transformation and policy reform at the local, state and federal level, he is also responsible for introducing TMS into the public mental health system for the first time in our county.
In addition to his leadership in the health and human services sector, Dr. Sherin has a portfolioof scientific accomplishments that include seminal sleep studies featured inSciencemagazineas well as a conceptual model of the psychotic process for which he received the prestigiousKempfAward from the American Psychiatric Association.