Codesigning Mental Health Equity for Black families at Seattle Children’s Hospital

“How can Seattle Children's Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Department meet community-defined mental health needs while building and retaining a racially, ethnically, and linguistically representative workforce?”

Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH) staff, leadership, and community leaders came together to create a Codesign team, facilitated by CoLab for Community and Behavioral Health Policy. The purpose was to collaboratively re-design mental health services and bring about much-needed change to improve access to mental health services at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

The Codesign team gathered and examined data from community needs assessments, SCH emergency department data, outpatient data, and conversations with Odessa Brown clinic, to identify communities who consistently showed poor mental health outcomes and low access to care. Although numbers do not tell the whole story, it gives us an idea of the needs that are and are not being met.

From the information gathered, the Codesign team decided to focus on the Black community and identify policies and programs that could be re-designed to better serve the needs of Black families seeking mental health care at SCH.

Caregiver listening sessions were held to further inform this process. Eleven caregivers attended the first listening session and shared stories of seeking care at Seattle Children’s Hospital. They shared their struggles and their hopes for change while providing insightful suggestions. Participants were given additional opportunities to be a part of this project, including joining the Codesign team, participating in one-on-one interviews, or being a part of a Community Accountability Council.

We planned a follow-up listening session that would focus on creatively designed access to mental health care for Black youth and their families. However, upon further consideration, the team recognized that there have been numerous asks of the community for their participation in community listening sessions. Similar questions are asked without much follow-up or accountability, and community members are tired. They are also tired of the lack of communication between different groups and back to the community. Because of that, we shifted our approach to lessen the burden on communities to respond to yet another request.

To further inform our recommendations, we looked for publications or literature reviews that contained data on specific policy or program areas that affect health equity for Black families. We found seven distinct areas. From there, we worked with our Community Engagement team (bios listed above) to add any missing policies or programs. We then grouped each policy into a broader theme. The Community Engagement team then helped to narrow the list down to the top five policy areas by ranking each area in order of importance to them.

These are the five broad policy areas that we’ve identified based on research and discussions with caregivers on the Community Engagement team:

-Community Health Workers

-Expanding Black Therapists

-Quality of Care

-Increase Ability to Address Multiple Mental Health Needs

-Parent-to-Parent Support

We realize every policy area is important and they may overlap with each other. We asked for community help in narrowing down which policy area(s) we should focus on first. Participation in the ranking survey helped us determine which area(s) we should try to address first in creating new policies and programs to improve care for Black families at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

We surveyed members from the Black community in Washington State who were, at the time, supporting a child/adolescent with a mental health need and interested in informing policy and program change at Seattle Children’s Hospital.