Faith-based organizations can now get funding for addiction recovery programs, HHS announces

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says faith-based organizations that meet evidence-based addiction recovery standards will now be able to access federal funding under the Trump administration’s new policy on tackling drug addiction and homelessness nationwide.

“We are bringing faith-based providers fully into this work,” Kennedy said at Prevention Day, the largest government-sponsored gathering dedicated to advancing the prevention of substance use, hosted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration on Monday.

“This is a chronic disease. It's a physical disease. It's a mental disease, it's an emotional disease. But above all, it's a spiritual disease. And we need to recognize that. And faith-based organizations play a critical role ... [in] helping people reestablish their connections to community.”

Kennedy, who pointed to the impact addiction has had on his family, including his own recovery from heroin addiction as a teenager, said America has been spending an estimated $93 billion annually treating substance abuse disorders. The overall impact of addiction, when collateral costs are included, soars to an estimated $920 billion.

“I myself, I spent 14 years beginning in my early teens as a heroin addict. I found my way into recovery. My little brother, David, two of my nieces, and many other family members are among the casualties in the National epidemic of addiction and overdose,” Kennedy told the audience. “So, I'm very much aware of the dimensions of the disaster of this national crisis.”

Kennedy says a key part of the government’s new strategy in fighting addiction is a new $100 million program called STREETS, or Safety Through Recovery, Engagement and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports. The new program will focus on targeted outreach, psychiatric care, medical stabilization, and crisis intervention, while connecting Americans experiencing homelessness and addiction to stable housing that sets them up for long-term recovery and independence.

“The epidemic of addiction feeds a national malaise of loneliness, of despair, and it amplifies the problems of mental illness and homelessness. For decades, our government response system refused to acknowledge these realities,” Kennedy explained.

“We built programs into silos. We funded fragments instead of pathways. We waited for people to ask for help after they had already lost their health, their jobs, their families, their lives. That approach has failed,” he declared.

“At HHS, we are changing the course. We are grounding our new policies on the hard-learned lessons of experience and of gold standard science. We're using evidence and not ideology. And we're treating prevention as our first responsibility because stopping addiction before it starts is the most effective intervention.”

The incidence of substance abuse disorder, which refers to impairment driven by repeated use of drugs or alcohol, increased from 7.4% in 2019 to 16.8% in 2024 among people ages 12 and older, SAMHSA survey data show. Approximately eight in 10 people with a substance use disorder in 2024 did not receive treatment.

Kennedy says the new approach to addiction treatment under the STREETS program will ensure that people who need help with addiction “will no longer fall through the cracks.”

“We’ll engage people continuously, from first contact on the street through recovery, through employment and through self-sufficiency,” he said. “Law enforcement, courts, housing providers and health care systems will work as one team, so people will no longer fall through the cracks.”

Kennedy also announced the $10 million Assisted Outpatient Treatment grant program to support adults with serious mental illness. The AOT program is a civil court-ordered, community-based outpatient mental health treatment program for adults with serious mental illness who are unable to engage with conventional outpatient treatment and are unlikely to be able to live safely in their community.

Responding to the announcement on funding for eligible faith-based organizations, Tom De Vries, president of Citygate Network, a Colorado-based association of 330 Christian rescue missions and ministries, told The New York Times that his members had relied on philanthropic money for years and are now processing how government funding could change their ministry.

“The government has reached out to us and invited us into the process more than we had been previously,” he said.

“New ministries look at this and say, this may be able to open the door for us to serve in ways we have not been able to,” he added. He further noted that any funding requirement that would ask Christian organizations to compromise their religious convictions might give some faith-based organizations pause.