No Wrong Door for Support & Recovery: What Macon County Can Teach North Carolina About Navigating Care - WNC Health Policy Podcast Ep. 29
In Western North Carolina, mental health and substance use are consistently identified as major community health priorities. But knowing what people need is different from building a system they can actually navigate.
In a podcast episode from the beginning of the year, we explored the national effort to advance “No Wrong Door” (NWD) systems to help people navigate long-term services and supports (LTSS). In this episode, we take that conversation down to the county level and speak with Sheila Jenkins from No Wrong Door for Support and Recovery in Macon County.
Six years ago, community conversations brought together local agencies and providers and surfaced a recurring problem: people were struggling to navigate a fragmented network of services. If they were turned away from one door, many simply stopped looking. Sheila and community partners helped form a network to fill those gaps without duplicating what others were already doing.
Today, the organization averages roughly 700 visits a month and works across mental health, substance use, homelessness, housing, transportation and peer support. Staff don't simply provide a resource list. They help determine what service fits, make the connection, provide transportation, and work across health care, social services and the justice system to help someone reach the right door.
That ground-level experience raises important questions for the broader health policy conversation in NC:
In NC, what does “no wrong door” mean beyond information and referrals seen with NCCARE360 or 211?
How do we account for the different providers, funding streams, eligibility rules and transportation realities across North Carolina's 100 counties? Can our newly designated ROOTS Hubs take that lead while supporting what’s already working on the ground?
How can funders avoid overly restrictive money allocation to better support community needs?
Are new investments connecting existing organizations, or inadvertently creating parallel systems?
And most importantly, are folks on the ground navigating policy helping shape it?
Macon County's model isn't something to simply replicate statewide. Its value is as a demonstration of how NWD can be built around local conditions and relationships and become a critical voice for policymakers.
The national conversation gives us the framework. Communities show us what it actually takes to make the framework work and how the state can lend a hand. For health policy, each of these perspectives matter.
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About the WNC Health Policy Podcast: In each installment, we speak about different public health strategies for improving health and well-being in Western North Carolina (WNC). The WNC HPl is a collaboration between the NC Center for Health & Wellness at UNCA and MAHEC, with generous support from the Dogwood Health Trust.
Individual opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast are those of the author(s)/interviewee(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the WNC Health Policy Initiative, its host institutions of the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA), Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) or our funders.
