Thursday, May 29, 2025
5/29/2025
Royals Care Program of Eastern Mennonite University - The Royals Care program of Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia, will provide services and public education to its 798 undergraduate students to address challenges on mental health and substance use disorder, with special attention given to those with the most acute needs. Royals Care will build up the following elements of its mental health and substance use disorder programming and services so as to strengthen its infrastructure for suicide prevention on its campus. It will deepen connections between stakeholders on-campus and in the community; expand public education programming on student well-being, including mental health and substance abuse throughout the academic year; enhance the ability of the campus community to respond to mental health crises. While serving all students in need, this program will enable EMU to strengthen its response to students facing the most serious mental health problems, its population of focus for this grant. EMU’s Counseling Services has seen an increase in the seriousness of problems facing all students who come for help, including more complex trauma in the students’ history. Data gathered by Counseling Services indicates that in the past two years—among the students who have come to the office for help—between 31 and 34% of students have considered suicide at some point in their lives and between seven and 17% have made attempts. Twenty to 26% have engaged in self-injury at some point in their lives. The number of psychiatric hospitalizations has averaged three per academic year until 2022-2023, when the number rose to six hospitalizations per academic year. In this academic year, Counseling Services is projecting there will be 10 hospitalizations. EMU has established the following goals and measurable objectives to enable it to successfully implement the program. Goal 1: Enhance coordination of services, protocols, and educational programming on issues involving mental health and substance abuse disorders. Objectives: 1.1: Hire Project Coordinator; 1.2: Develop Care Coordinating Committee (CCC) of campus and external partners; 1.3: Facilitate regular meetings of the CCC to discuss programming, referrals, and to share resources; 1.4: Develop public education plan each year; and 1.5: Engage in professional development. Goal 2: Increase the availability and effectiveness of crisis-response resources, especially related to suicidality. Objectives: 2.1: Develop resource list of crisis service providers; 2.2: Share list with all on-call/overnight personnel; 2.3: 988 and other crisis response information shared widely across campus; 2.4: Emergency response training for residence life and student life staff each year; and 2.5: Review crisis response protocols with CCC each year. Goal 3: Increase education and awareness of harm caused by misuse of alcohol and other drugs among EMU students. Objectives: 3.1 and 3.2: Develop substance use disorder educational materials and provide via public education campaigns; 3.3: Hire four Royals Care student leaders to assist in education and outreach efforts; 3.4: Conduct student substance abuse and mental health screenings. Goal 4: Expand the ability to serve individual student needs for mental health services, especially those students facing the most serious mental health problems. Objectives: 4.1: Increase availability of qualified mental health counseling on campus; 4.2: Connect students with providers in the community; and 4.3: Provide resiliency training for students. Over 800 will be served annually as a result of outreach, public education campaigns, screenings, seminars, and training, for a total of 2,400 individuals reached during the grant period.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).