Statement on Department of Justice’s Interpretation of Integration Mandate Affecting People with Disabilities
June 23, 2026
June 23, 2026
June 15, 2026
Ten years ago, the Results Innovation Lab began with a belief that still guides the work today: children and families are better supported when leaders learn together, use data differently, and stay focused on what families need to thrive.
The Results Network annual convening, which took place last month at Bethel New Life in Chicago, brought together more than 50 leaders from 17 organizations and 14 states across the Lutheran Services in America network. As Lutheran Services in America marks the 10-year anniversary of the Results Innovation Lab, this convening reminded us of where the work began and why it still matters.
What did we learn?
The Results Network brings leaders together to leverage data, test ideas, learn in community, and move from intention to impact. For the past 10 years, the Lab’s collaborative learning model has created space for leaders to learn with and from one another, implement small tests of change, and apply what they are learning in real time. As one longtime Results Network participant reflected, “The last eight years and this group have provided me more growth than any other experience I have had. It has given me strength and courage and the resilience to keep going.”
Throughout the convening, resilience was not treated as a separate topic from the work. It was part of the work itself. Workforce conditions are not separate from family outcomes. The way organizations support their teams affects how families experience services, how strategies are implemented, and how prevention efforts take root. Dr. Darius Tandon, professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, explored with participants the mounting pressures facing the health and human services field and offered practical frameworks and evidence-based strategies for building workforce resilience, including community co-design principles and stress management intervention.
Participants prioritized workforce best practices such as aligning resources to more efficiently support workforce and co-creating solutions with staff. Lutheran Social Services of New York now has all levels of program staff participating in their Solutions Lab and ongoing development of an internal quality assurance tool. At Lutheran Child and Family Services of Indiana/Kentucky, the entire team is now involved in data reporting to increase understanding of the importance and use of data with funders and partners to sustain programs. So far, this has led to 63% of annual goals being met within the first quarter and a noticeable decrease in stress from the team.
When leaders listen to the people closest to the work and the people most impacted by systems, strategies become more responsive, practical, and sustainable. Bethel New Life brought together a panel of local leaders to share stories of grassroots partnership and key principles that can apply to other organizations. Panelists reflected on what it means for lived experience to shape programs and strategies, not just respond to them. They also challenged leaders to consider what it looks like when work is done with communities, rather than to communities.
The Results Network continues to focus on developing and strengthening the prevention continuum. Teams participated in a gallery walk where they shared their Resilience and Results Plans with one another. Bethel New Life shared how they recently developed a community ambassador role to increase referrals from community partners and build trust with families. Lutheran Services in Iowa highlighted plans to leverage staff skills developed through training to increase staff confidence in providing preventative services and increase access to preventative home visiting services across the state.
The convening closed with teams naming what they would carry forward from the year and identifying commitments to strengthen their work, including increasing intentional listening practices to elevate community voice, strengthening transformational partnerships, and holding team members accountable to reflection and curiosity. When leaders learn together, communities can help shape the work, and organizations stay focused on creating the conditions that help children and families thrive.
Renada Johnson is Senior Director of Children, Youth & Family Initiatives at Lutheran Services in America.
June 15, 2026
Like much of the American healthcare delivery system, providers of services for mental health and substance use disorders—collectively referred to as behavioral health—are increasingly expected to quantify the impacts of their work. These efforts to track quality of care are designed to advance the Triple Aim: improving the experience of care and outcomes, while controlling costs.
For faith-based health and human services organizations, this shift may feel both familiar and new. Many providers have long focused on holistic, person-centered care. Today, however, that work must also be translated into data to adapt to a changing system, because what gets measured gets paid for, and data is not the plural of anecdote.
A Changing Landscape: Measurement Is Driving the System
Accordingly, behavioral health service providers are adopting better data collection practices and quality measurement strategies. These changes are not happening in a vacuum. The ongoing shift to value-based payment (VBP) models, with nearly every state Medicaid system pursuing strategies that tie funding to quality outcomes rather than volume, is accelerating the change. The implications are clear: outcomes, not activity, define success. Measurement is no longer optional; it is foundational to meaningful and sustainable practice.
Why Measurement Matters for the People You Serve
The stakes are particularly high in behavioral health. People with behavioral health needs face significant inequities—individuals with serious mental illness die 10 to 25 years earlier than the general population.[1] While there have been some recent declines in combined deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide, that progress is vulnerable in a rapidly shifting policy environment.
This underscores why effective measurement matters: without it, gaps in access, quality, and outcomes remain elusive and unclear. If you are not measuring the problem, you can’t fix it. Quality measurement, when done well, is a practical tool for closing those gaps. It helps organizations identify successes, uncover opportunities, and focuses resources where they are most needed—improving access, efficacy, and the overall experience of care.
The Challenge: Too Many Measures, Not Enough Clarity
At the same time, the current measurement landscape spans multiple quality domains and comes from a wide range of sources—federal agencies, states, payers, accrediting bodies, and advocacy organizations. The result is often duplication, fragmentation, and confusion about what matters most.
Traditional measures capture only a fraction of meaningful outcomes, particularly for organizations delivering holistic, community-based care. Perhaps the most meaningful indicators— the lived experiences of individuals and their families—are often not considered or accounted for in existing measures.
The result is that providers are navigating a system where administrative burden is high, data systems are not fully aligned, and resources for building infrastructure are limited. In many cases, data are used more for compliance than for continuous improvement. As such, the real challenge is not a lack of measurement—it is too much measurement without enough utility.
What’s Emerging: A More Focused, Outcome-Oriented Approach
Despite these challenges, recent guidance and industry trends point to a clearer direction for behavioral health measurement that includes:
Given the growing recognition that true quality depends on integration across systems, linkages that consider access to medical care and essential social supports such as housing, nutrition, transportation, and employment will become increasingly important. For faith-based providers, this integrated, whole-person approach is not new—but the expectation to measure and demonstrate its impact is.
Building Measurement Readiness: Start Where You Are
One of the most important takeaways for providers is that being “measurement-ready” does not require complex systems. Instead, readiness depends on a few foundational elements:
Equally important is how measurement is implemented. Successful organizations engage staff in the process—doing it with them, not to them—and start small, building capacity over time. Measurement should focus on what is actually actionable. More data are not always better; actionable data are what drives improvement.
Looking Ahead: Measurement as a Tool for Impact
Measurement is challenging, and it can be expensive. It is also essential—not only for participating in value-based payment models, but also for telling your organization’s impact story and describing your work in credible, compelling ways.
Ultimately, enabling people with behavioral health conditions to thrive requires a reliance on data-driven strategies to deliver the highest quality care in the most resource-conscious way. Measurement, when thoughtfully applied, strengthens care, amplifies the work of community partners, and supports better outcomes.
The behavioral health sector will continue moving toward shared accountability, aligned incentives, and systems that support continuous improvement. Providers who build measurement readiness in phased, realistic ways—paired with appropriate investment and support—will be best positioned to succeed.
Joshua Rubin is Vice President of Client Solutions at Health Management Associates.
[1] Plana-Ripoll O, Musliner KL, Dalsgaard S, et al. Nature and prevalence of combinations of mental disorders and their association with excess mortality in a population-based cohort study. World Psychiatry. 2020;19(3):339–49
June 15, 2026
With midterm elections within sight this November, Congress will be working ahead of the August recess with a focus on our key policy priorities, including:
Reconciliation 3.0
Federal policymakers are increasingly turning their attention to finding savings through additional healthcare cuts including to Medicaid to generate savings as the war with Iran continues. As part of a potential third reconciliation package (“Reconciliation 3.0”), which could advance later this summer, provisions related to Medicaid could include new program integrity measures and eligibility restrictions that could reduce coverage. This is on top of the significant cuts and program changes enacted as part of the first reconciliation bill, HR 1, which are still unfolding.
States Implement Work Requirements
At the same time, new federal guidance from CMS is moving forward with expanded work reporting requirements, which will require more frequent eligibility verification and potentially limit exemptions for medically frail individuals. Together, these developments increase administrative burdens for providers and create new barriers for patients in maintaining coverage. We encourage members to stay engaged and make their voices heard.
Take Action: Join your peers in telling Congress “no more cuts to Medicaid”. You can use our quick and easy advocacy tool to write your lawmakers and urge them to oppose any further cuts to Medicaid.
House Advances Road to Housing
The House recently passed the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, marking a significant step toward addressing the nation’s affordable housing shortage. While the legislation includes efforts to promote local zoning reforms and expand housing development, the House-passed version eliminated proposed incentive programs.
Now What?
Attention now turns to the Senate, where leaders have indicated that additional work is needed before a final agreement can be reached.
Yes in God’s Backyard
At the same time, we continue to advocate for “Yes In God’s Backyard” (YIGBY) legislation, which aims to ease faith‑based land conversions for affordable housing development. Action on this effort is increasingly moving to the various states, with eight states having already passed some version of this bill, including Washington, California, Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland, Hawaii, Florida, and most recently in Virginia.
Because workforce shortages remain a significant concern across the health and human services sector, we continue to support efforts to strengthen the pipeline of healthcare and direct support professionals, including by removing barriers for internationally trained workers through the Healthcare Workforce Innovation Act.
Nursing Professional Designation Downgraded
At the federal level, a new policy change excludes most nursing programs from the definition of a “professional degree.” This action has prompted a lawsuit from major nursing organizations. If upheld, the change could limit access to federal student loans for advanced nursing education, with potential downstream effects on workforce supply at a time when shortages are already acute.
We will continue to monitor these developments closely and keep you informed as the policy environment evolves in the months ahead.
Sue Polis is Vice President of Public Relations and Government Affairs at Lutheran Services in America. Sarah Dobson is Senior Director of Advocacy and Public Policy at Lutheran Services in America.
May 14, 2026
Rural communities have been navigating serious health challenges for a long time—hospital closures, workforce shortages, long drives to see a specialist, and higher rates of chronic disease, to name just a few. These issues are deeply connected, and for many communities, they’ve reached a breaking point.
Congress aimed to address these challenges by creating the Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Fund, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR1) passed last July. The RHT Fund represents an important federal investment—designed not just to keep rural health systems afloat, but to help them evolve into models that are more stable, preventive, and community‑centered over the long term. And at the same time, while the RHT Fund is key in strengthening rural health access, with the level of Medicaid funding cuts overall including in HR1, resources will continue to be a challenge more broadly. And because the funding for the RHT Fund is for five years, sustainability also needs to be further considered as this work moves forward.
Now that states are moving from planning into implementation, the RHT Fund is starting to shape how rural health care is financed, organized, and delivered. While states receive the funding directly, nonprofits and community‑based organizations are essential partners in turning system‑level investments into real improvements in people’s lives.
If your organization works in or alongside rural communities, understanding how the RHT Fund works—and how your state is approaching it—is becoming increasingly important. To further inform how the Lutheran Services in America network can leverage the RHT Fund, read: The Rural Health Transformation Fund: What It Is, How States are Using It, and Where Nonprofits Fit In.
Shao-Chee Sim is Executive Vice President for Health Policy, Research, and Strategic Partnerships at Episcopal Health Foundation and Sue Polis is Vice President of Public Relations and Government Affairs at Lutheran Services in America.
