Steve Fund, JED’s Equity in Mental Health Framework Shows Promising Results

Students of color are almost twice as likely to not seek mental health care, compared to White students, according to the Steve Fund, a mental health nonprofit devoted to young people of color, and The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to preventing suicide.

That’s why, in 2017, the two nonprofits provided institutions with a set of ten “actionable recommendations and key implementation strategies to help strengthen their activities and programs to address the mental health disparities facing students of color” through their Equity in Mental Health Framework (EMHF) project.

Following a two-year pilot implementation of those recommendations at 18 colleges and universities, the Steve Fund and JED have released their findings. They found that:

•  Senior administrative buy-in proved to be critical in delivering successful outcomes.
•  Cross-departmental collaborative efforts had the most successes in providing comprehensive mental health support for students of color.
• Dedicated financial resources for prioritizing the mental health of students of color demonstrated the commitment to the campus community.
• EMHF workshops proved beneficial in increasing campus stakeholder engagement.
• Pilot colleges that maximized the EMHF consultation services in executing the Equity and Mental Framework on campus reported the best results.

Based on those results, Steve Fund is currently working to implement the EMH framework at colleges across the country.