Watch DMH Deputy Commissioner Joan Mikula’s opening remarks at the 2014 launch of the Knowledge Center. 

Our Mission
The Children's Behavioral Health Knowledge Center was established in Chapter 321 of the Acts of 2008: An Act Relative to Children's Mental Health, with a mission to ensure that: 

  • the workforce of clinicians and direct care staff providing children's behavioral health services are highly skilled and well trained

  • the services provided to children in the Commonwealth are cost-effective and evidence-based

  • the Commonwealth continues to develop and evaluate new models of service delivery

 

The Children’s Behavioral Health Knowledge Center is located at the Department of Mental Health in the Child, Youth, and Families Division.  As part of the state’s mental health authority, the Knowledge Center's purview is the entire children’s behavioral health system, across EOHHS agencies and across public and private payers.

The Knowledge Center fills a gap in the children’s behavioral health system by serving as an information hub, through its Annual Symposium, website, workshops, and webinars.  Center staff work with colleagues who are developing, implementing, and advocating for practices, programs, and service delivery models that are based on the best available evidence about what works to improve outcomes for young people.  As an intermediary organization, our activities facilitate connection among the rich array of children’s behavioral health researchers, program developers, providers, practitioners, and consumer advocates in Massachusetts.  We connect research, policy, and practice and connect Massachusetts with national leaders in innovation and best practice.

Through this collaboration, we identify strategic opportunities to fund small projects that the Center is uniquely positioned to support, ones that leverage other investments and have the potential to catalyze change throughout the system.  Our projects generally focus on the application of research knowledge, not the production of it.  

Annual Reports