Improving School Mental Health via National Learning Collaboratives With State and Local Teams: Components, Feasibility, and Initial Impacts.

School systems need practical and effective quality improvement strategies to advance school mental health promotion, prevention, and treatment services. Collectively, these efforts can be used to promote child and adolescent mental health, well-being, and academic success. The current study reports on the feasibility, initial impacts of, and recommendations from a national, multi-level learning collaborative conducted by the National Center for School Mental Health, University of Maryland School of Medicine and administered throughout the United States.

Advancing Mental Health Screening in Schools: Innovative, Field-Tested Practices and Observed Trends During a 15-Month Learning Collaborative.

Schools are well positioned to facilitate early identification and intervention for youth with emerging mental health needs through universal mental health screening. Early identification of mental health concerns via screening can improve long-term student development and success, but schools face logistical challenges and lack of pragmatic guidance to develop local screening policies and practices. This study summarizes mental health screening practices tested by six school districts participating in a 15-month learning collaborative.

Can We Move the Needle on School Mental Health Quality Through Systematic Quality Improvement Collaboratives?

Learning collaboratives (LCs) have often been used to improve somatic health care quality in hospitals and other medical settings, and to some extent to improve social services and behavioral health care. This initiative is the first demonstration of a national, systematic LC to advance comprehensive school mental health system quality among school district teams. Twenty-four districts representing urban, rural, and suburban communities in 14 states participated in one of two 15-month LCs.