Behavioral Health

The County partnered with Sharp Healthcare in January 2025 to add six new Crisis Stabilization Unit beds at the Chula Vista Medical Center. The units and beds give people who are experiencing a behavioral health crisis a calm, better place than emergency rooms, hospitals or jails to become stable and seek help.  

In May 2025, the County’s Behavioral Health Services department was awarded $29.1 million in state funds to create new mental health and substance use treatment services. The money will be used for two main projects, one that will create a new substance use treatment center in National City. The second will help pay for a first-of-its-kind Children’s Crisis Residential Care Facility with 16 residential care beds in the County’s Polinsky Children’s Center in Kearny Mesa.

Environmental Sustainability

In September 2024, the Board adopted the County’s 2024 Climate Action Plan, the blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the unincorporated areas and at County facilities, with the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045. The plan includes 70 actions designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Equity

In December 2024, the County’s Department of Environmental Health and Quality further boosted local economies and the hopes of aspiring chefs by  waiving permit fees for people wanting to operate “Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations.” The County started allowing “MEHKOs” in 2022. The program lets people turn their home kitchens into mini-restaurants and food businesses for a fraction of the cost of opening a storefront restaurant.

Healthy and Safe Communities

In October 2024, the County Health and Human Services Agency, working with the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), personally hit the streets to survey people living near the Tijuana River Valley about sewage pollution and its effect on their health and well-being. The County and CDC ultimately conducted two health surveys of people living and working in the most impacted part of the South Bay to help determine what actions the County could take with the state and federal government in the future.

The first survey — the Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response — assessed the impact of the sewage crisis by visiting people in their homes in Imperial Beach and Nestor. The second survey — the Assessment of Chemical Exposures — was for people who worked in, lived in or visited the affected areas and asked about physical and mental health effects. Both reported that more than two-thirds of the people surveyed believed the area was unsafe and their health had declined; and roughly 80% said their quality of life was hurt and they made lifestyle changes to protect themselves.

In August 2025, the new San Diego County Public Health Laboratory that was opened in May was recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council as having achieved the highest “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” — LEED — certification possible. The council runs the LEED certification program and calls it the most widely recognized green building rating system in the world. The new lab was the 34th County facility to earn the rating.