A robust behavioral health workforce is essential to address the country’s worsening behavioral health crisis. Yet, addressing behavioral health needs requires unpacking state and federal policies that drive behavioral health service provision and payment. This talk will provide examples of how federal initiatives to expand the behavioral health workforce poses both opportunities and challenges for the field and will describe why education and loan payment, scope of practice regulations, licensure, and reimbursement are key levers to sustaining the behavioral health workforce. We will describe the health policy research agenda of the UNC Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center and future opportunities to collaborate. Finally, we will discuss opportunities for CFHA’S REC members to use the UNC Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center to obtain grant funding to examine policy issues.