A new program providing an alternative response to mental health-related 911 calls has been officially launched in Oklahoma City.
Mobile Integrated Healthcare — an Oklahoma City Fire Department program developed through the city’s Public Safety Partnership — is meant to divert mental health emergency calls away from police and toward trained behavioral health professionals who can better address the caller’s needs.
As Assistant City Manager Jason Ferbrache puts it, not every emergency call needs a police response. Recent demands for police reform have compelled law enforcement to reexamine how certain emergencies might be better addressed by mental health workers, freeing police to instead focus on other problems and serious crimes.
“There are calls that come in that really are specifically behavioral health in nature, and so as a city, we now have the staff to respond, especially in that area, to help folks who are experiencing behavioral issues,” said Ferbrache, who oversees the city’s police and fire departments and law enforcement policy implementation. “The other plus side to that is, if we have staff dedicated to responding to 911 calls involving behavioral health, that adds capacity to our other first responders, police, fire and EMSA, that can deal with those life-threatening emergencies — so it’s really a twofold approach.”
How and why did Mobile Integrated Healthcare get started?
Mobile Integrated Healthcare, which has been in development since last year, is a response to 39 recommendations on eight topics made to Oklahoma City officials in 2022. The recommendations — a result of the work of the mayor’s Law Enforcement Policy Task Force, the Community Policing Working Group and the city-hired consultant 21CP Solutions — ranged from prioritizing de-escalation, improving officer wellness and exploring alternative responses to mental health calls.
Demands for an alternative public safety response to behavioral health issues grew out of increased calls for police reform in Oklahoma City, which heightened after local and nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020.
For the past two years, the city’s Public Safety Partnership has involved community stakeholders, city officials and law enforcement collaborating on how to enact the recommended reforms. Andrea Grayson, the Public Safety Partnership’s implementation manager, said Mobile Integrated Healthcare expands two programs that had been in place at the fire department: the Overdose Response Team formed in 2023 and the Community Advocacy Program begun in 2019.
“There was also a specific recommendation that we determine existing community resources and capacity for an alternative response model in the community,” Grayson said. “And in doing the research, we made the determination to keep that in-house and to build and launch Mobile Integrated Health. It was really just a natural progression and an organic development, because the fire department already had those health programs that were already set up, and it just made sense.”
What does Mobile Integrated Healthcare do?
The city started staffing Mobile Integrated Healthcare in late 2024 with a 27-member team, including a program manager, clinicians, paramedics, response navigators and peer recovery support specialists. The city also purchased vans specially fitted to serve residents experiencing mental health crises.
There are four subteams that make up Mobile Integrated Healthcare, which include:
- The Crisis Call Diversion Team embedded at the 911 Call Center, helping to provide de-escalation, stabilization and support for callers in need of mental health service;
- The Crisis Response Team, responding to mental health emergencies where a person might be showing signs of being a risk to themselves or others;
- The Alternative Response Team that continues working overdose responses, as well as less-severe behavioral and mental health calls; and
- The Community Advocacy Program, which helps individuals who frequently call 911 for nonemergency needs get connected to community resources that can better serve them.
The teams were recognized during a May 6 ceremony officially launching Mobile Integrated Healthcare at Oklahoma City Fire Department Station No. 1, 820 NW Fifth St.
“We’re about public services, we’re about meeting the needs of our community, but what we most importantly have is stepping into space and putting the right people in the right place,” said Oklahoma City Fire Chief Richard Kelley. “And what I’m really proud of is this being a behavioral health forward program that really has excellent people that are first class. They’re experts in their area that are passionate about serving others.”
Lori Brown-Loftis, who became program manager in September, has worked in the mental health field for 16 years. She said the Mobile Health team members have been working in a “soft launch” capacity since January, trying to become accustomed to working with the different resources in different settings with limited hours, and was excited to see the program officially launch.
Mobile Integrated Healthcare now operates from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. The program manager said there are plans to extend operating hours in the future.
“I feel like being able to provide mental health treatment in a trauma-informed way in the community, helping people stay in the least restrictive environment — I’m incredibly passionate about that,” Brown-Loftis said. “It’s been such an incredible and exciting thing to be a part of something brand new in Oklahoma City. It’s so needed, and I’m just glad to be a part of it, honestly, and to help sort of shape how Oklahoma City is responding to people who are struggling with mental health.”
The program also was developed with guidance from the city’s Crisis Intervention Advisory Group, a committee of mental and behavioral health experts, social service providers, clinicians, academics and community advocates who were brought in to help ensure best practices are being followed.
Jessica Hawkins, director of community initiatives at the nonprofit Healthy Minds Policy Initiative, is the lead facilitator for the Crisis Intervention Advisory Group. She said the committee meets regularly to be briefed on the progress of the mobile health teams, who have already had “an incredible impact” responding to hundreds of calls in the past few months.
“This allows for an opportunity to keep law enforcement in the field doing what they do in the space of public safety,” Hawkins said. “They’ve already realized quite a bit of time and cost savings, I know, by not having to dispatch police into situations where they’re not the best responder, and this is just going to continue to go up and up and be a big win for the city and the residents.”
Hawkins also said it was refreshing to see Oklahoma City leadership investing real time, money and effort into finding solutions for behavioral and mental health issues. She has long advocated for establishing protective factors that can prevent harmful problems from happening to residents in the first place.
“Life happens, and people have circumstances mostly out of their control that lead them into a situation of distress,” Hawkins said, “and if we can intervene appropriately as early as possible, with the best possible care applied to what’s happening for that person, we can prevent these events from happening ever again.”
