{"id":384322,"date":"2025-11-17T03:07:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/384322\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T03:07:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:07:42","slug":"ahead-of-mamdani-taking-office-mayor-adams-makes-changes-in-nyc-response-to-mental-health-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/384322\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahead of Mamdani taking office, Mayor Adams makes changes in NYC response to mental health calls"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Adams administration is planning to resign the city\u2019s non-police mental health response team program<\/a>, or B-HEARD, shifting it from the purview of the FDNY, City Hall announced Friday.<\/p>\n

Under the changes announced by City Hall, NYC Health + Hospitals<\/a>, which currently operates the program with FDNY, would entirely run the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis new model for B-HEARD will allow our FDNY EMTs the opportunity to focus further on other emergency response units as part of our city\u2019s efforts to improve ambulance response times and use our resources more efficiently, while still addressing mental health emergencies we continue to see playing out in our city,\u201d Mayor Adams, who leaves office at the end of the year, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The move drew sharp criticism from the union representing EMTs in the fire department.<\/p>\n

The shift away from a public safety response bears some similarity with the future Mamdani administration\u2019s<\/a> push to expand the program and change the way the city deals with mental health emergencies. Zohran Mamdani has pledged to put the program under the responsibility of the new Department of Community Safety and hire peer counselors to respond to the mental health crises.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe remain confident that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will implement his full vision for B-HEARD within the Department of Community Safety so we can finally meet our city\u2019s dire mental health crisis head-on and deliver excellent public safety for all New Yorkers,\u201d Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said in response to the announcement.<\/p>\n

Katz, who said he\u2019s hoping to stay in his role under Mamdani, emphasized that the new model could make it easier to scale up the program and could help patients find long-term care since the H+H already provides a bulk of mental health services in the city. B-HEARD currently operates in less than half of the city\u2019s 78 police precincts.<\/p>\n

The revamped response teams would made up of a nurse, social worker and ambulance driver, instead of EMT responders.\u00a0EMT workers will be reassigned within FDNY<\/a> once the transition goes into effect in Spring 2026, said Dr. Mitch Katz, CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals.<\/p>\n

Katz also said Thursday this new model will help boost FDNY response times, which have steadily grown longer over the past several years.<\/p>\n

Unions representing EMTs slammed the announcement, with Henry Garrido, executive director of DC37 calling it \u201cshortsighted and unnecessarily rushed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe plan privatizes the ambulance system with hospital contractors instead of simply backfilling the vacant positions perforating our EMS ranks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Oren Barzilay, president of Local 2507 which reps EMTs and paramedics, said the move showed \u201cdeep disrespect\u201d for the union\u2019s members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe men and women of EMS have responded to individuals experiencing mental health crises for the past 50 years and have successfully carried out the work of the B-HEARD program in spite of the limited resources the current administration has given us,\u201d Barzilay said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Adams administration is planning to resign the city\u2019s non-police mental health response team program, or B-HEARD, shifting…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":72571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,8988,1370,405,403,8989,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,80,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-384322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-election","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-politics","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115562836523650643","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}