Event: Kickoff for Imagine: Building Healing Communities project

On October 14, 2025, more than 80 people gathered at the Kansas City’s Main Public Library for the kickoff of Imagine: Building Healing Communities. Co-sponsored by the Community Mental Health Fund (CMHF) and Integrus Health Group, the event marked the start of a CMHF-funded, year-long initiative to elicit community feedback on  translating the Imagine model from concept into actionable design.

As the nation faces deepening homelessness and fragmented systems of care, Imagine seeks a different path, one grounded in shared community responsibility, creativity, and hope. Participants from behavioral health, housing, justice, the arts, and lived-experience communities came together to explore how this framework could take shape locally. One attendee reflected, “I was grateful to attend and recognized many important agents of change in the room ... there was … thoughtful excitement!”

Over the coming year, the Imagine team will work with community partners to elicit feedback on how the framework's grounding community and three interconnected pillars (affordable housing, meaningful work, and accessible, high-quality care) might be adopted in each of several communities.  The framework is described in the Imagine concept paper. This collaborative phase will also refine the social contract that lies at the heart of the approach  — a mutual agreement that everyone within the community contributes to and benefits from.