Our Mission
Right Response Colorado brings together two fields that have often worked separately — health care advocates and criminal justice reformers. This new alliance works together to transition Colorado away from requiring police, prosecutors, and prisons to provide health care services to people with unmet health needs, and toward a fully-funded health care system that offers the right response to meet those needs. Right Response Colorado includes people and families with lived experience, clinicians, practitioners, providers, researchers, advocates and academics. We share expertise, resources, and advocate for shared policy priorities.
We are guided by the following core values:
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Right response to the right situation at the right time.
When Coloradans experience health crises, too often there is a criminal justice response instead of a community- based response. As a result, jails and prisons are the biggest providers of behavioral health care in our state. Yet we know arrest, prosecution and incarceration worsen behavioral health outcomes, are more costly, and less effective than behavioral health interventions. We are committed to disentangling behavioral health from the criminal justice system.
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Behavioral health care is health care, period.
We are committed to breaking down existing siloes that treat mental health and substance use as separate issues, in order to create systems where people have access to evidence-based, culturally responsive behavioral health care that they need and want.
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Harm reduction.
We are committed to harm reduction that treats people using drugs with kindness, compassion and dignity and that embraces evidence-based interventions to minimize negative consequences and eliminate stigma.
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Centering leadership of living and lived experience.
We recognize that those with lived and living experience are closest to the problem and therefore closest to the solution, but oftentimes are the ones with the least amount of power and the least amount of resources. We are committed to lived experience informed practices by ensuring people with lived and living experience have their voices heard and a prominent seat at the table.
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Equity.
We recognize stark disparities exist in health systems and criminal legal systems that disproportionately affect economically and socially marginalized people —especially people of color. We are committed to prioritizing equity and reducing these disparities in pursuit of our long-term goals.
We Are Right Response Colorado
Action Is Safer, Advocates for Recovery CO, American Civil Liberties Union- CO, Bring Our Neighbors Home, CO Coalition for the Homeless, CO Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention, CO Consumer Health Initiative, CO Criminal Defense Bar, CO Drug Policy Coalition, CO Freedom Fund, CO Mental Wellness Network, CO Providers Association. CO Psychiatric Society, Doctors for Drug Policy Reform, Disability Law Colorado, Harm Reduction Action Center, Healthier Colorado, Mental Health CO, Promotores de Esperanza, Southern Colorado Harm Reduction, Together Colorado, Tribe Recovery Homes, Yarrow Collective
Be a part of the right response.
Join Coloradans advocating for behavioral health care that is evidence-based, compassionate, and effective.