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Federal health officials have suspended a program that helps thousands of professionals and community groups across the country find effective interventions for preventing and treating mental illness and substance use disorders. The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices is housed within the Health and Human Services Department’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (Sun and Eilperin, 1/10)

The program, called the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, was launched in 1997 and is run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Its website lists 453 programs in behavioral health — aimed at everything from addiction and parenting to HIV prevention, teen depression, and suicide-hotline training — that have been shown, by rigorous outcomes measures, to be effective and not quackery. The most recent were added last September. (Begley, 1/10)

[T]he Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the department under HHS that manages the program, wrote on its website that the contract for the database had been discontinued. SAMHSA is still "very focused on the development and implementation of evidence-based programs in communities across the nation," the notice says. (Hellmann, 1/10)