Identifying Geographic Gaps in Behavioral-Health Service Availability and Developing an Evidence-Based Resource-Allocation Framework in the United States

The need for behavioral health services far outstrips workforce capacity, with significant variation across the country. To address this, we developed an evidence-based model to allocate constrained resources using publicly available program, operational, and demographic data. The framework incorporates workforce shortages, facility location, facility utilization, and sociodemographic factors to estimate supply and demand at the county and tract levels. We created a composite service-gap index for priority ranking, using travel times and 2SFCA to assess spatial accessibility. The findings show that almost half of U.S. counties face serious provider shortages, and rural residents have far less provider availability within a 30-minute radius. This simulated deployment targeted resources more effectively to high-gap communities, improved allocation efficiency compared with a status quo approach, and provided a visual, replicable deployment model.