KanAWARE is a collaboration of the University of Kansas’ school-based Telehealth ROCKS program, the Kansas State Department of Education (SEA), the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services (SMHA), three Local Education Agencies (LEAs), three community-based behavioral health providers, and their communities. The aspirational mission for this collaboration is for every child to have the exact same opportunity for success in school and in life. More specifically, the overarching goal is to improve student mental health needs through evidence-based interventions across the multi-tiered service model. KanAWARE supports interventions for students and school personnel and family/community members living in southeast Kansas (Coffeyville, Pittsburg, and districts served by Greenbush). Additional LEAs will be added in years 2 through year 5. The selected rural school communities have a significant impact from the COVID19 pandemic, long-standing health disparities, and unmet needs.
KanAWARE will focus on the southeast Kansas region as the poorest and least-resourced area of the state, with high needs around social determinants of health and trauma-informed approaches. The cross-organizational team brings over twenty years of school-based telebehavioral health experience, most recently with Telehealth ROCKS school-based telebehavioral health services across specialties (e.g., psychology, psychiatry, developmental medicine, applied behavior) and a statewide capacity-building and primary prevention initiatives using the Project ECHO telementoring model. Based on the overwhelming need to address social determinants of health as part of the successful implementation of the multi-tier system, KanAWARE schools and communities will integrate school-based community health workers into the behavioral health approach and workflows to support the students/families and to meet all KanAWARE goals.
Kansas’ leading experts will provide technical assistance in the range of evidence-based/ evidence-informed approaches related to resilience for students and school personnel; school-based mental health; post-trauma approaches; parenting; prevention collaboratives partnering family, school, and community; child behavioral health advances; substance use prevention/treatment advances; and multi-stakeholder advisory groups. Goals include:
Goal 1: To strengthen partnerships across key school-based behavioral health stakeholders in southeast Kansas, the poorest and least resourced rural area of the state.
Goal 2: Leveraging existing evidence-based/evidence-informed resources identified by the KanAWARE partners and securing additional resources based on need assessment findings, increase the number of students served across each of the three tiers of the pyramid model.
Goal 3: Leveraging an online referral tracking and outcomes system, develop/refine and implement KanAWARE multi-system referral pathways to advance evidence-based/informed, equity-based, trauma-informed, recovery oriented services
Goal 4: Building on KanAWARE partner input, resources, and adult learning best practices such as Project ECHO telementoring and QI coaching, advance a professional community of learning that advances capacity building and an effective workforce across child-serving systems.
Goal 5: Building on KanAWARE partner input, resources, and adult learning best practices, build a family community of learning that meets needs related to child behavioral health and social determinants of health.