Grant renewal will support work to expand mental health care to Iowa children and adolescents
Increasing access to pediatric mental health services in Iowa—especially in the state’s medically underserved and rural communities—is the goal of a program led by child health experts in the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and in collaboration with colleagues in the UI College of Education and primary care and mental health providers around the state.
The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) recently awarded a three-year, $2.25 million grant to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (Iowa HSS) to expand mental health care capabilities serving Iowa’s youth.
Specialists in the UI Stead Family Department of Pediatrics and its Division of Child and Community Health will contract with Iowa HHS to lead initiatives focused on workforce development, support for Iowa’s primary care providers, training on evidence-based therapies, and school-based mental health services.
The initial grant recognized a growing mental health crisis in the U.S. It was exacerbated by the pandemic, and it hasn't let up—especially in Iowa, where we have limited mental health resources
The award is a renewal of a previous five-year HRSA grant for the Iowa Pediatric Mental Health Care Access Program. Over the past five years, the program has provided webinars and conferences for more than 4,000 participants—physicians, nurses, social workers, and other community-based providers—and facilitated over 8,000 telehealth appointments with a child psychiatrist.
“The initial grant recognized a growing mental health crisis in the U.S. It was exacerbated by the pandemic, and it hasn’t let up—especially in Iowa, where we have limited mental health resources,” says Tom Scholz, MD, professor and director of the Division of Child and Community Health in the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics. “With this grant, we’ll not only enhance the workforce capabilities already out there but add to it to provide direct services through telehealth and additional support through our school systems.”
With the renewed grant funding, the Iowa Pediatric Mental Health Care Access Program will focus on four main objectives:
- Increasing the capacity of Iowa’s primary care providers to treat children with mild to moderate mental health needs within their medical home
- Supporting primary care providers through a statewide network of regional pediatric mental health teams and the delivery of child and adolescent psychiatry services through telehealth
- Increasing the number of professionals trained to provide behavioral therapies to children and adolescents
- Partnering with the UI Scanlan Center for School Mental Health to increase access to school mental health services
Telehealth has been a valuable tool in helping children across Iowa, especially in rural and medically underserved communities, says Jennifer Cook, MPH, the grant’s project manager and a program manager in the UI Division of Child and Community Health.
“Wait times for a child to receive mental health services can be a couple of months or longer, and can require a lot of travel,” Cook says, “so expanding telehealth into communities and schools across the state will continue to help lower some of these barriers to care.”
Collaboration with the UI Scanlan Center for School Mental Health, based in the UI College of Education, also will be key. Along with training opportunities for Scanlan Center staff, the Iowa Pediatric Mental Health Care Access Program will support a Scanlan Center clinician who will provide individual and group therapy as well as mental health support for students following a crisis event at their schools.
The grant will also extend an existing contract between the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health and WellTrack Connect, an online referral platform to help individuals seeking mental health services connect with mental health providers in their community or over telehealth. Scanlan Center staff has worked with WellTrack Connect to build a statewide network of providers to increase access to care, including rural areas where access is limited.
Expanding mental health services for Iowa’s young people, especially in school settings, is critical, says Alissa Doobay, PhD, clinical associate professor of counseling psychology in the UI College of Education and director of clinical services at the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health.
“In Iowa, one in 10 high school students has attempted suicide, and suicide is the second-leading cause of death for adolescents in the state,” Doobay says. “Also, 50% of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, which makes high school a critical time for intervention.”
Ninety-two of Iowa’s 99 counties, which includes 68% of the state’s population, are classified as mental health professional shortage areas, according to HRSA’s Bureau of Health Workforce, and results from the 2020 Iowa Maternal and Child Health Title V Program Needs Assessment identified access to mental health services as one of the state’s highest needs. Among Iowa’s children and adolescents (ages 0-17), 9% were reported to have ongoing emotional, developmental, or behavioral conditions that required treatment, 42% of whom had problems receiving services, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health.