About

An alliance built for the work that needs someone whose first allegiance is to the person seeking help.

Most behavioral-health policy in Colorado has been shaped by organizations advocating for their own slice — provider associations for providers, payer councils for payers, advocacy groups for advocacy. Each does important work.

Together, they leave the person seeking help out of the room.

People First Behavioral Health Alliance is built differently: a cross-sector coalition where providers, payers, advocates, and network administrators sit at the same table — and the person seeking help is the explicit priority of the work.

What We Believe

Mission and Vision.

Our Commitment

PFBHA is dedicated to putting people first by partnering with individuals and families, advocates, legislators, providers, and state and local government to identify the opportunities to improve the quality and efficiency of Colorado's behavioral health care.

As member organizations we strive to put the interests of the people of the State of Colorado ahead of our individual organizations' needs.

We recognize that the problems we face as a state are complicated and require a tenacious focus on identifying and eliminating barriers to 'doing the right thing' for people.

Our Vision

To work with partners to create a system of behavioral health care that

·01 focuses on the needs of the individuals it is intended to serve
·02 is forward-looking
·03 promotes high quality of care
·04 is accountable to Coloradans as those who use and those who fund the system
·05 evaluates and addresses long-term solutions to problems at a systemic level
·06 integrates behavioral health needs with other healthcare and social needs
·07 develops strategies for care delivery that prioritize access, quality, and outcomes
·08 focuses on safety and civil rights while creating pathways for simpler care delivery
·09 aligns legislative intention with real-world impact on the people served
·10 collaborates with state and local policymakers to provide trusted and actionable options over the long term.

Cross-Sector by Design

The diversity isn't a feature. It's the mechanism.

Working with seven different organizations who don't fully agree is harder than working with seven who do. That's the point. When a payer, a provider, and an advocate disagree in the same room — and don't walk away — the position that emerges has been pressure-tested by the people who'd otherwise be arguing in opposite directions. The alliance trades the speed of consensus among the like-minded for the durability of consensus across the whole system. The difficulty is the point.

It's uncomfortable in the best way. A payer, a provider, and an advocate disagreeing in the same room — and not walking away. Trust gets built somewhere in that friction, and the policy that comes out the other side is more honest because of it.

Colorado Access

Scope

What this configuration covers.

Together, the seven member organizations of People First touch nearly every layer of Colorado's behavioral-health system — from front-line care in mountain communities to plan administration on the Front Range, from culturally-specific service in Denver to statewide advocacy. The breadth shows up in the policy work: positions developed by this coalition reflect realities no single-role coalition could surface alone.

All 4

system roles represented at one table — provider, payer, advocate, network administrator

Statewide

regional reach across Front Range, Mountain, Western Slope, and Eastern Plains

Culturally-specific

Spanish-language and lived-experience perspective built into the membership, not bolted on

DRAFT

Statewide advocacy organization for mental and behavioral health policy in Colorado — advancing equitable access, parity, and lived-experience leadership across the system.

Serves: Statewide

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How We Work

Four operating principles.

·01

Working in the open

Position papers, coalition memos, and policy positions are published as they're developed. Transparency is the antithesis of how this field has historically operated, and we treat it as a competitive advantage.

·02

Durable across cycles

The challenges we work on outlast any single budget year, election cycle, or administration. The alliance is structured to outlast them too.

·03

Non-partisan

The work aligns with what the system needs, not with what any party prefers. We work with anyone willing to focus on the person seeking help.

·04

Person-centered

Every decision — what to publish, what to advocate for, what to compromise on — gets measured against whether it serves the person seeking help. Not the institution, not the clinician, not the association.

Membership

What it actually means to be a member.

Membership in the alliance isn't a subscription — it's a commitment. Member organizations bring their distinct perspective, their data, their political capital, and their willingness to compromise on org-level interests when the system needs it. In exchange, member organizations get a coalition voice that no single sector could speak with alone, and a forum where the work gets pressure-tested before it goes to the state.

How It Works

An invitation, not an application.

There is no application form. Membership begins as a conversation — about the alignment between an organization's work and the alliance's, about what each side would bring, and about whether there's a fit. If there is, an invitation follows.

Start a conversation

Stay Informed

An occasional briefing, by email.

Updates on coalition policy work, what's moving in Colorado behavioral health, and what we're paying attention to. No more than once a month.

We'll only use your email to send you the briefing. Unsubscribe any time.