TREAT California  ·  Statewide initiative  ·  2026–2028

We are spending billions
reacting to crises
we could prevent.

This is not a values argument. It is a math problem. California has the science, the funding mechanisms, and the proven models. What it has never built is the infrastructure to make them work together — for every Californian, in every community.

See the evidence Read the white paper
$280B
Annual cost of inactionEconomic burden of untreated mental illness in the U.S. each year
$82.9M
Proven government savingsRAND evaluation of California's integrated care model
24%
Reduction in public costsFrom coordinated mental health care — same population, better outcomes
11 yrs
Average delay to first careFrom first symptom to first treatment for a mood disorder
The argument that crosses every divide

Mental health treatment is not compassion spending.
It is fiscal policy.

In today's polarized environment, mental health gets framed as a values debate. It isn't. Every dollar California doesn't spend on coordinated care gets spent downstream — in emergency rooms, ambulances, jails, shelters, and lost economic productivity.

The question is not whether we pay. We are already paying. The question is whether we pay in ways that work — or keep funding crisis response that changes nothing.

"A society is judged not by how it responds to crises, but by how rarely it allows crises to happen."

What California is actually spending

  • Emergency departments absorbing psychiatric crises at hospital rates — the most expensive setting for the least therapeutic intervention
  • Jails at $60K–$100K per person per year that don't treat anything and return illness to the street
  • Ambulances responding to behavioral health calls that clinical teams could handle at a fraction of the cost
  • Medicaid spending concentrated in a small identifiable population that coordinated care can stabilize within months

An argument that works for everyone

Conservatives see: reduced government spending, lower incarceration, stronger workforce, less dependency on public systems.

Progressives see: equity, trauma-informed care, reduced criminalization of illness, community health.

Business leaders see: workforce productivity, lower insurance costs, stronger communities.

This is not a partisan issue dressed up as bipartisan. The evidence genuinely supports all three frameworks — because good infrastructure works for everyone.

What is actually achievable

RAND's evaluation of California's Full Service Partnership found $82.9 million in government savings and a 24% reduction in overall public costs — without creating new entitlement programs.

CalAIM already provides the financing mechanism. The workforce exists. The science is advancing. What has been missing is institutional coordination to use it at scale. That is what TREAT builds.

California is the proof of concept

From Los Angeles to San Francisco to the Central Valley — every community is living this.

Homelessness is the most visible symptom. But the crisis runs deeper — into suburbs, schools, workplaces, and families that never make the news. California spends more per capita on mental health than almost any state. The outcomes don't match the investment. That is an infrastructure failure, not a compassion failure.

Los Angeles
75,000+
Individuals experiencing homelessness on a given night — the largest concentration in the nation. LA County spends over $1 billion annually on homeless services. Without integrated mental health infrastructure, the cycle continues regardless of spending.
San Francisco
$672M
San Francisco's annual behavioral health budget — among the highest per capita in the country. Yet open drug use, psychiatric crises on city streets, and overloaded emergency departments persist. Spending without coordinated infrastructure produces visible failure at high cost.
Inland California
60%
Of rural Californians with mental illness who receive no care — often because there is no provider within driving distance. The crisis is not only urban. Inland communities and agricultural regions face severe workforce shortages with no infrastructure to address them.

Homelessness is the most visible face of this crisis — but it is not the whole story. The same infrastructure failures leave a parent in Fresno unable to find a therapist, a veteran in Redding without PTSD treatment, a teenager in Stockton without crisis support, and a worker in Sacramento cycling through depression without a diagnosis. California's mental health crisis is everyone's crisis.

$82.9M
In government savingsRAND evaluation of California's Full Service Partnership — the integrated model TREAT scales statewide
Source: RAND Corporation RR2783
24%
Reduction in total public costsAcross homelessness, incarceration, and healthcare — coordinated care, same population
Source: RAND Corporation RR2783
72 hrs
The critical intervention windowFollow-up within 72 hours of a crisis contact dramatically reduces repeat emergencies. Most systems don't do it.
Source: LA County ACR Framework
What TREAT California builds

Not more programs.
A system that works.

+
01 · Crisis Care
A Crisis Care Ladder
Someone to call. Someone to respond. Somewhere to go.
Mobile crisis teams, clinical diversion from 911, and guaranteed 72-hour follow-up — statewide. Expanding crisis stabilization units and psychiatric urgent care across every California region. Reduces ambulance use, ED visits, police involvement, and jail bookings simultaneously.
+
02 · High-Need Patients
Intensive Care for the 5%
The small group driving most of the public cost
A unified high-risk registry with assigned multidisciplinary teams. A small percentage of individuals generate a disproportionate share of all public costs — jail, ED, shelter, EMS. Integrated teams interrupt the cycle within months, not years.
+
03 · CalAIM Financing
Use What Already Exists
Leverage Medi-Cal authorities already in place
California already authorized the tools. Most counties aren't fully using them. Enhanced Care Management and Community Supports are funded under CalAIM. TREAT coordinates deployment across all 58 counties — closing the gap between authorization and implementation.
+
04 · Workforce
Build the Provider Pipeline
California cannot treat what it cannot staff
A statewide credentialing and training infrastructure for the next generation of mental health practitioners. Rural communities, underserved regions, and emerging therapy modalities all face severe shortages. Building the pipeline now means treatment is available where Californians need it.
+
05 · Housing as Healthcare
Stability Is a Medical Intervention
Discharge to the street is a readmission guarantee
Recuperative care, coordinated hospital discharge, and tenancy support reduce readmissions within 12 months. Housing stability is not adjacent to healthcare — it determines whether every other intervention works or gets erased the moment someone leaves the hospital.
+
06 · Accountability
Measure Everything. Publicly.
Transparency is how public trust is rebuilt
Monthly public dashboards on ED visits, jail bookings, crisis diversion rates, housing outcomes, and cost per high-need individual. Californians have watched billions disappear without visible results. Accountability is how a public institution earns the right to continue.
Human stories

Behind every statistic
is a family that deserved better.

All stories
Clinician · Los Angeles County
"My patients don't lack will. They lack access to systems that could actually help them. We've known what works for decades. The infrastructure to deliver it — that's what's missing."
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner · LA County Department of Mental Health
First responder · San Francisco
"We're not equipped to be the mental health system. But that's what we've become. Every call is one the system failed to prevent."
Senior Emergency Responder · San Francisco
Mother · Central Valley
"There was no one to call. The nearest psychiatrist had a six-month wait. My son ended up in the ER three times before anyone treated the actual problem."
Parent · Fresno County
The full scope of the crisis

This is bigger than
what you see on the street.

Homelessness is the most visible consequence of California's mental health infrastructure failure — but far from the only one. The same broken system touches every community, every income level, and every corner of the state. The suffering that doesn't make the news is vast.

🏫

Schools

One in five California students has a diagnosable mental health condition. Most receive no school-based support. Early intervention during childhood is the highest-return investment in the entire system.

🏢

Workplaces

Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in working-age adults. Lost productivity, absenteeism, and early workforce exit cost California's economy hundreds of billions annually.

👨‍👩‍👧

Families

Untreated parental mental illness is one of the strongest predictors of child poverty and intergenerational trauma. Systems that reach parents reach the next generation simultaneously.

🌾

Rural California

Inland communities and agricultural regions face provider shortages that make care effectively inaccessible. The rural crisis is invisible to urban policymakers — and severe.

When we focus, we deliver

America has solved
hard problems before.
This is one of them.

We built the interstate highway system. We put humans on the moon. We mapped the human genome. We created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine — a citizen-driven institution that became the world's largest public funder of stem cell research with $8.5 billion in voter-approved bonds.

When this country focuses on a hard problem with the right institutional design and sustained commitment, it delivers. Mental health infrastructure is not more complex than any of those challenges. It has simply never received the same focused investment.

TREAT California is the beginning of that focus — not a program, not a campaign, but the early architecture of a public institution built to last, built to measure, and built to work for every Californian.

Image placeholder
California landscape or civic infrastructure — DALL-E prompt C
Join the effort

The first $5 million comes from three to five people.

When civic initiatives of this scale succeed, early philanthropic leadership is decisive. Those who invest now are not simply funding a future campaign. They are determining whether California builds the institutional foundation required to transform mental health care for generations.

The preparation phase runs through December 2027. If public support, coalition strength, and philanthropic commitments align, a statewide ballot initiative launches in January 2028.

Begin a conversation
Community listening tours

One region, story collection, narrative research

$10K
Coalition & policy convening

Statewide stakeholder alignment

$25K
Voter research & feasibility polling

Professional focus groups and statewide baseline poll

$100K
Full preparation phase — one quarter

Statewide listening, coalition, and digital engagement

$250K
Founding donor

Shapes the institution from its very first days

$1M+
Dr. Jeannie Fontana, MD, PhD
About the founder
Dr. Jeannie Fontana, MD, PhD
Founder and CEO, TREAT Humanity

Dr. Jeannie Fontana, MD, PhD, watched her mother fight and die from ALS. That loss became a compass. Everything that followed traces back to that moment and the conviction it forged: four decades of building the research institutions, governing structures, and public systems that allow science to reach people who need it.

She served on the Board of Trustees of the ALS Association and Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute, and as Vice President of the Board of the American College of Regenerative Medicine. As a founding member of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, she helped construct the public infrastructure for regenerative medicine in America, governing an $8.5 billion institution that became the largest stem cell research agency in the world.

Her career is not a collection of roles. It is a coherent project: repeated movement toward infrastructure-level influence in medicine, science, policy, and public health.

She founded TREAT Humanity to bring that same discipline to mental health and wellbeing, for the generation of Californians who cannot wait another decade for the systems to catch up to the science.

Mental health treatment is not only humane policy.
It is fiscal policy. And it is long overdue.