Collaboration: Creating a Mental Health Tool
“We want our families to know that we are their partners, so we not only worked on this website to help provide resources around stressful topics, but also tried to make our communications around this project speak to the idea that we’re all in this together. They are not alone," said Apollo Harden, Director of Digital Marketing
By Kaley Johnson
One strength that sets Cook Children’s above the rest is our ability to problem solve through mass collaboration. Recently, we flexed that muscle when departments across Cook Children’s worked together to create a much-needed mental health resource for patients and community members through the system’s Behavioral Health Steering Committee.
Over the past few years, Cook Children’s primary care staff have noticed an increasing number of families and patients seeking mental health assistance during visits. Kids and their parents have been asking pediatricians about depression, anxiety, ADHD and other issues that typically require the patient to see a psychiatrist or other specialist to receive care. However, with this rise in requests, there are not always enough points of access for families to receive care and we realize we, as a system, need to be proactive. Our staff can make referrals for these patients, but many of us want to do more to tackle the increasing mental health needs we are experiencing across our communities. According to the National Institute of Health, almost 20% of minors have reported a mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral problem.
This issue is well-known to the Behavioral Health Steering Committee. The committee began to brainstorm various actions that could be taken and one of the first steps was determining what educational material already existed within Cook Children’s, and how Cook Children’s could better get that information to parents, kids and professionals who needed it. They invited various staff from outside the committee to the table to work on a solution to this growing need.
Apollo Harden, Director of Digital Marketing, was part of that team. He commented: “The collective group genius we have within the system allows us to bounce ideas around easily and identify paths worth pursuing. In this case, we found one that was actionable, aligns with our Promise, and had a clear goal we could work towards.” From across the system, various staff joined in on this effort and the work quickly took off in a positive direction.
Our Psychiatry and Library teams shared education materials they had created. The Education Department, the Public Relations team, Center for Community Health, Marketing, and Cook Children's Physician Network staff jumped in to share resources they had identified over the past decade. Suddenly, the Steering Committee had hundreds of articles on a multitude of behavioral health topics at its fingertips.
To organize the information, Cook Children’s psychiatrists stepped up. They analyzed data about the types of visits are families were having, and what resources they were requesting. This informed all involved on what resources were actually needed by families, and helped the content team identify groupings to place everything within.
For example, the ADHD section was broken down further into specific questions that parents were already asking, such as “what does ADHD medication do?” and “how do I get a 501c for my child at school?” The Education department had multiple resources applicable for this, then with the help of Center for Community Health and third-party sources (such as Kids Health and Medline), we were able to fill gaps to cover as many potential behavioral and mental health questions as possible.
After the information gathering, the departments tackled the next question: how to get the information out there.
The first step was to build a website structure. Cookchildrens.org/mental-health was designed to support this new content, with an easy-to-navigate collection of resources for patients and families. The site includes links to hundreds of educational articles on different topics, resources like the Raising Joy podcast and Links of Hope Support Group, virtual trainings on support strategies and even a video series created by Cook Children's Center for Community Health to help inform and support caregivers.
To spread the message about this resource, Apollo and other team members created posters, topic-based cards, and brochures to distribute across the system, with a focus on supporting our primary care offices and to also spread the posters around key areas within our Medical Center.
“We want our families to know that we are their partners, so we not only worked on this website to help provide resources around stressful topics, but also tried to make our communications around this project speak to the idea that we’re all in this together. They are not alone.” Apollo said.
The entire process took many few months, made possible through Cook Children’s existing foundation consisting of the wonderful Education department, Medical Center staff, Provider Network, Behavioral Health department, Center for Community Health, Communications and many other teams all working together to improve care for our community. At Cook Children’s, that’s just how we do it.
In the Numbers: A Much-Needed Resource
As of June 26, 2024, Cook Children’s Mental Health resources website has already experienced 6,400 visits. In this chart you can see that the engagement levels (people accessing links/resources on the site during a visit) has steadily gone up as the promotional material is now reaching people who need these resources.
With Gratitude and Joy,