The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)’s Region 1 Office, Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of Regional Operations in Region 1, and the New England MHTTC’s Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative have collaborated to convene the Healthcare workers and Educators Addressing and Reducing Trauma (HEART) Collective to enhance collaborations between schools and community health centers, mental and behavioral health agencies, and/or community-based organizations to support positive mental health and well-being for youth in a school-based setting. We help teams working in schools design and refine their comprehensive, inclusive school mental health systems or to choose from a menu of options to promote holistic mental health for the entire school community.

From September 2020 to January 2021, the HEART Committee—a group of New England leaders in community health care, education, and with lived experience of mental health challenges—met regularly to discuss the barriers to collaboration and brainstorm ways to better support the staff involved in these collaborations. We continued to build community with other educators with the Compassionate Conversations in Schools Series, where Collective members came together to learn about staff and community wellness practices and share challenges and successes around efforts to promote positive well-being in their schools and health care centers. We continue to facilitate co-learning and networking among education, healthcare, and mental and behavioral health leaders in the HEART Collective with our New England School Mental Health Peer Support Hour Series.

HEART Collective 2021-2022 Action Plan:

• Our HEART website and public mental health awareness campaign will launch in December 2021. Stay tuned for a link to our website, which will offer resources on a variety of topics to support school mental health collaborations. These resources include original HEART Collective Tip Sheets: Best Practices for Collaboration, Addressing Possible Barriers to Collaboration, a Glossary of Mental Health Terms, and Ways to Support Advocacy.
   
• The HEART Collective will launch the HEART Webinar Series in January 2022! This free training and technical assistance series is open to the public. All educators, mental health providers, and other community members collaborating with schools to deliver mental health services are invited to join this five month community of practice.
   
• At the close of our HEART Webinar Series, we will design a HEART HealthEKnowledge Course, synthesizing lessons learned and best practices for these collaborations around school-based mental health in a self-directed, online course to enhance collaborations for schools and healthcare centers around the nation.

For more information about the HEART Collective, please contact the New England MHTTC’s Education Coordinator, Dana Asby, at [email protected].