Dr. Brenda Reiss-Brennan is a medical anthropologist and psychiatric nurse practitioner working in primary care and forwarding mental health integration (MHI) for over 45 years.
The Primary Care Collaborative (PCC) is delighted to name Dr. Brenda Reiss-Brennan, Mental Health Integration Implementation Science Senior Advisor at Intermountain Health and PCC Whole-Person Care Workgroup Member, as our latest primary care champion.
Dr. Reiss-Brennan recently sat down the PCC to discuss her career-long efforts to bolster whole-person primary care and integrated mental health. She began the interview by noting the many champions it took to bolster Intermountain Health’s MHI work throughout their 25-year journey. Rather than simply improving efficiency, the organization sought to build high-functioning, trusted teams that delivered care through meaningful relationships.
To illustrate this, she shared the story of “Sarah,” a 72-year-old patient who, for the first time, felt treated as a whole person. Instead of being handed prescriptions and dismissed, Sarah’s physician listened deeply, normalized her depression as a legitimate health condition and incorporated mental health care into routine primary care visits. When additional support was needed, she was connected to trusted team members within the same practice. Over time, her depression and arthritis no longer defined her life as she was able to focus on her family and fully engage in living. For Reiss-Brennan, this reflected the lived experience of whole-person care.
She then traced the origins of the program back to 1998, when respected primary care physicians joining Intermountain Medical Group challenged leadership to address the full complexity of patients’ lives. They agreed to redesign care for chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma but also insisted that it was unacceptable to ignore the domestic violence, substance use, anxiety and depression patients brought into those same visits. In a pivotal act of reciprocity, the medical group’s CEO took them seriously and put together a diverse team—including patients and families—to design a path forward. The solution: make mental health routine. Patients received physical and mental health care in the same visit, within the same trusted relationship, supported by team-based care rather than siloed services “down the hall.”
This relational, team-based operating model that trained everyone—from physicians to receptionists—to normalize and address mental health produced measurable results. Patients who experienced continuous, team-based integrated care had fewer emergency department visits and hospitalizations, improved adherence to chronic disease treatment and active depression care plans. Eighty percent of depression care was delivered within primary care itself, with additional support layered in as needed. Published results in 2016 demonstrated both improved quality and cost savings: the model cost approximately $22 per patient per year while saving about $115 per patient per year. These outcomes contributed to national evidence cited in the 2021 National Academies report on high-quality primary care, reinforcing that integrated, team-based care was both achievable and worthwhile.
Reiss-Brennan then spoke about how the healing power of family and community helps drive her. She believed primary care is uniquely positioned as a “holding environment” for family health—a trusted social hub where people first voiced sacred or frightening concerns and realized they were not alone. She argued that trust is health care’s most precious resource. She is equally passionate about belonging and teamwork, noting that MHI became an identity shared across clinicians, staff, patients and community partners who collectively felt empowered to build something better.
Looking ahead, she identified two major challenges for primary care. First is preserving trust at a time when public confidence in health care institutions is eroding. Primary care teams would need to sustain meaning in their work and avoid isolation or burnout. Second is ensuring that policies and governance structures actively created the conditions necessary for whole-person care. Trust and wellness require deliberate relational systems.
When asked if she could have changed one thing about the American health care system what it would be, Reiss-Brennan said she believed less in “magic wands” and more in enduring social movements. Mental health integration spread not just because of strong data, but because it relieved a shared burden of fragmentation and restored hope. She envisioned whole-person primary care recognized and governed as a common good and a fundamental human right, supported by networks that rewarded and sustained integrated, team-based care.