In October 2018, IMPH hosted a one-day Legislative Summit that convened Health Policy Fellows alumni, key stakeholders and IMPH board members to provide an in-depth look at a timely public health topic: improving access to school mental health services. The SC Department of Education and the SC Department of Mental Health are currently collaborating to address the significant gap between youth who need and receive mental health services and have set a goal that by 2022, every student in the public school system will have easy access to school mental health services. South Carolina looks to build a strong state-level initiative for school mental health that pursues a shared agenda from all key stakeholders in the school-family-community system as the state leads the nation in the provision of school mental health services.
To bring light to this issue and inspire continued discussion, IMPH has released the first of a four-part video series Tomorrow's Hope: Approaches to South Carolina School Mental Health Services on our YouTube channel. Follow the conversation on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtags #schoolmentalhealth and #hope4tmrw. The remaining videos in the series will be featured in the coming weeks.
A special thank you to The Duke Endowment and the Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina for their support of this work.