The coronavirus pandemic has profoundly affected the lives of people across the country and around the world. Families have lost loved ones. Economies collapsed as millions of jobs disappeared. Schools and office buildings emptied with no certainty of when students and workers might return.
The pandemic forced many to adjust to a new normal as it upended old routines. Maintaining health and wellbeing during these times can be challenging for the most resilient. Still, it poses a particular set of challenges for children and adolescents at critical development stages, many of whom may have lost access to essential services often provided by schools.
To meet the needs of at-risk youths and education providers, Reclaiming Futures, a nonprofit organization within Portland State University that provides platforms and programming that promote public health, justice, and equity for young people, has developed a new tool to support the health and wellbeing of adolescents and their families.
Here to Help (H2H) is a self-guided, online, public health screening tool for youth, families, and educators. H2H is designed to help adolescents, their caregivers, and family members identify stressors that may impact their health and wellbeing and immediately connect them, should they choose, to local resources that can assist.
A youth or family may receive a link to the H2H tool via an email from a school or community-based organization. The participant engages anonymously by answering questions covering several topic areas, including mental health, substance abuse, food security, economic and housing stability, and racial equity experiences. The tool allows the participant to elevate their awareness of potential issues related to their health and wellbeing by navigating through a series of questions in each topic area. After the participant completes a module, H2H provides a list of relevant, local, and accessible resources available to assist those who might be having experiences that could adversely affect their health.
"One of our guiding principles is to connect youth and their families with resources they need when they need them," said Evan Elkin, national executive director of Reclaiming Futures.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Reclaiming Futures was working with several partnering schools around the country to build a school-based public health system of universal screening that focused on destigmatizing mental health, relationship building, conflict resolution, and discipline reform. With the schools forced to close to protect students' and staff members' health, that work came to a halt.
"When that happened, our team at Reclaiming Futures immediately started thinking about how we could get the work we were doing in the hands of families and youth that needed it. The solution was to translate the work into an online tool, so we built Here to Help," Elkin said.
To pilot the H2H tool, Reclaiming Futures partnered with schools and community organizations seeking screening methods to support students and families. H2H is flexible, allowing schools to connect students and their families, and faculty and staff to valuable local resources. Partners can tailor H2H to meet their needs. If desired, a school can request to collect identifying and demographic data and information on responses and response rates. In addition to technical services and support, Reclaiming Futures assists with communications strategies and implementation support. H2H software development partner, Tickit Health, a Canadian software company that embraces digital empathy in its product design, offers partners digital customization to meet their identification and branding needs.
"Here to Help could serve as a universal screening tool across youth-serving systems," Elkin said. "In that capacity, the tool has the power to help providers gain a better understanding of the social determinants that impact the health, wellbeing, and life outcomes for adolescents. But more than that, it can help those experiencing a variety of stressors connect to resources that can improve outcomes for students, families, and educators."
With the coronavirus pandemic showing no signs of easing, a tool like H2H can help individuals and families identify factors that can impact health and wellbeing and connect to the resources that can provide critical assistance.
H2H is available to organizations interested in partnering with Reclaiming Futures via a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Portland State University's Office of Innovation & Intellectual Property.