The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences received a pair of grants of $1.95 million from the Blue & You Foundation for a Healthier Arkansas last July to support two behavioral health programs.
The Blue & You Foundation, established by Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, committed $750,000 over two years to support the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute’s AR-Connect program, which provides urgent mental-health and substance-use care to all Arkansans at no expense to the client. The AR-Connect call center is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can usually provide client appointments within one working day. AR-Connect’s mental health professionals are trained to care for Arkansans across the lifespan from children to older adults.
The Blue & You Foundation funding supports a comprehensive marketing campaign to increase access and improve immediate and long-term mental health outcomes among the state’s K-12 teachers, staff, administrators, parents and students.
“We’re working with an advertising company and UAMS Communications & Marketing on a plan to reach out to teachers, parents, students. It’s a very broad audience,” said Tony Boaz, AR-Connect’s program manager.
The need for therapeutic care has increased greatly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Boaz added. “Teachers and students especially need a way to get service quickly and we see this new campaign as a way to show them they have an avenue to see somebody for help.”
A second grant, worth $1.2 million, was earmarked to develop the UAMS Arkansas Trauma Resource Initiative for Schools (TRIS), a program that leverages the expertise of faculty and staff in the UAMS Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and Psychiatric Research Institute as well as partnerships with the Arkansas Department of Education and other key stakeholders. The TRIS team at UAMS provides training and resources to school personnel of K-12 schools in Arkansas to recognize and respond to the impact of trauma on students. The initial phase of the project aims to meet the immediate trauma-related needs of schools while laying the groundwork for longer-term organizational change initiatives.
Research shows that participation in evidence-based trauma treatment improves a child’s symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety as well as improvements in behavioral problems and social skills. In addition to these benefits, TRIS will help state schools be responsive to potentially traumatic events such as natural disasters, community violence and death of a student or staff member.
“In the first six months of operation, the TRIS program reached thousands of school personnel through training, coordinating mental health services, consulting, and providing needed community resources,” said Nikki Edge, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, who oversees the program. A total of 1,075 school personnel attended foundational trauma training during that period, with 98 percent saying they would recommend the training to a colleague, said Edge.
Over 100 school administrators have already attended TRIS outreach meetings, Edge said, with four school leadership teams receiving a consultation from a childhood trauma expert following a crisis at their schools.
“The initial phase of the project aims to meet the immediate trauma-related needs of schools while laying the groundwork for longer-term organizational change initiatives,” she explained.