Audience
Legislators and policy makers often ask about the Return on Investment (ROI) of Access Programs. In other words, they want to know how much money does the Pediatric Mental Health Care Access (PMHCA) and the Screening and Treatment for Maternal Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders (MMHSUD) program save? Determining ROI requires a complicated economic analysis that may not be possible for individual programs. These programs also primarily offer access, not treatment; ROI is not the correct measure of access. Even making an ROI argument may imply that saving lives is not a good enough reason, and in fact, that saving money is more important than saving lives. While calculating ROI may not be possible, it is still important to show the value of a program. This tool outlines how states can show value of the PMHCA and MMHSUD programs using approaches other than an ROI analysis including data points, key messaging, and measures for estimating value.