How culture saves Sacramento's Native American youth from suicide

The Care Now Clinic, established by Behavioral Healthcare Partners of Central Ohio, offers early crisis intervention services for those ages 12 and up, helping bridge the care gap between emergency rooms and waiting to see a physician. The group also recently launched a mobile crisis unit to even further expand access to care. Research shows these models cost less, reduce emergency room visits and make handling chronic conditions more manageable.

Dental offices like Asian Health Services are starting to incorporate mental health care in their dental services. By observing changes in oral health, building trust with patients to talk about their mental health and having them fill out questionnaires about how they’ve been feeling, dentists are able to identify patients that may be struggling and then help connect them with therapy and treatment. Asian Health Services screens 300 to 400 patients per year, about 7% of which are then referred to counseling.

The Native and Strong Lifeline aims to provide culturally relevant mental health care services and support to members of the Native community. Since launching, the lifeline has received over 1,200 calls from across the state, handled by its team of tribal crisis counselors, many of whom have their owned lived experiences with mental health struggles.

Wisconsin’s teen suicide rate and affiliated mental health concerns have increased, challenging school systems to maintain the quality of life for students. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has launched a Mental Health Project that allocates funds to different counties to focus on crisis, suicide, violence, and substance abuse prevention in schools. PATH is one successful program from this initiative—with cost-saving measures, increased student productivity, and improved quality of life.

The Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care program at UCLA in California is offering a new kind of patient-centered care that has helped bring relief to families in the region. The program, which creates a care plan "that builds in medical needs, solutions for caregiver stress and cultural traditions unique to each person and their family," has resulted in decreased stress and symptoms for patients and increased confidence and support for caregivers.

Individuals at a high risk of suicide can benefit from targeted, accessible, and client-centered care. As part of a new mental health initiative, the Czech government is funding mental health centers for patients at high risk of suicide. The target prevention includes care teams consisting of psychiatrists, nurses, and social workers, all involved in different aspects of the client’s care.

Worker-owned home-care cooperatives are emerging as an alternative to the for-profit agencies that dominate America's direct-care sector. In these cooperatives, professional caregivers earn an average of $2 more per hour than the industry standard, share in business decision-making, and stay on the job at nearly double the rate of workers at traditional agencies. Patients also stay with co-op agencies twice as long, suggesting higher satisfaction and quality of care.

A rural Texas county is using a free digital platform to connect residents to mental health resources. Bastrop County's new public health department partnered with CredibleMind to launch an online hub offering mental health assessments, self-guided tools, and a local services directory in English and Spanish. In its first six months, the platform reached nearly 1,900 unique users and achieved a 43% assessment completion rate.

The Davis Mountain Clinic, housed in a retrofitted shipping container, offers a hybrid telehealth model that addresses the unique barriers facing aging rural populations. Since opening in October 2025, the clinic provides a physical space with reliable connectivity and an on-site registered nurse who performs physical exams and helps facilitate virtual visits with remote physicians and specialists. Beyond medical visits, patients report successful navigation of healthcare systems with the clinic and Nurse Brewer's support.

Missouri's Transformation of Rural Community Health (ToRCH) pilot program is reimagining how rural hospitals serve communities by addressing social determinants of health. The program uses Medicaid waivers and a digital platform called Unite Us to coordinate referrals between hospitals and community organizations for non-medical needs like home repairs, utility assistance, and food security. In its first 18 months, the program generated nearly 3,000 referrals. The closed-loop referral system allows hospitals to track whether patients actually receive help, something that was impossible before.