Healthy Teen Minds

 

 

Healthy Teen Minds is an eight-year initiative to improve the mental health of teens in our tri-county region – Outagamie, Calumet and Winnebago counties. The work is funded by a $1.2 million grant from the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin. The funding is part of AHW’s initiative focused on improving community behavioral health.

The goal of the project is to reduce the rate of depression among teens by implementing population-level strategies that focus on prevention, promoting resiliency and coping skills among youth, and interventions for struggling teens.

Healthy Teen Minds, in partnership with The Boys & Girls Club of the Fox Valley and the UW-Extension – Winnebago County, is working with area high schools to implement Sources of Strength, a mental health wellness program that utilizes the power of peer social networks to change unhealthy norms and culture to ultimately prevent suicide, bullying, violence, and substance abuse. It’s one of the nation’s most rigorously researched peer leader programs and is presently on SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.

So far, 17 area middle and  high schools have joined this initiative and have adopted Sources of Strength. Using our grant funds, The Connection is making Sources of Strength more affordable and accessible for high schools in the region to adopt. Having developed a regional “trained trainer” model, the Healthy Teen Minds project now has its own nationally certified regional trainers, reducing the cost of implementation by 75 percent, to roughly $4,000 per school for a three-year implementation.

The Connection is now inviting high schools in Calumet, Outagamie and Winnebago counties to join its fourth cohort of schools to implement the program during 2020-21 school year.  For more information, contact Wendy Magas, Project Coordinator, at wendy@newmentalhealthconnection.org

Sources of Strength “Trainer the Trainer” CANCELLED

We have been actively monitoring COVID-19 in our region and social distancing guidelines, and have cancelled the Aug. 3 – 6 Sources of Strength “Trainer the Trainer” event in Menasha. We plan to reschedule and host the in-person training next year, in the summer of 2021.

Thank you to those who applied and registered for the training; we will reach out to you again in spring of 2021 with an update.

 

Tools for Sources Schools: