About the Initiative

Better designed policies can help increase access to effective mental health care and programs.

Policy Codesign is a participatory, creative process to help people in communities learn from each other and explore local policy solutions to complex problems. The Policy Codesign process produces a policy recommendation and implementation plan tailored to a particular community’s context. Because the recommendations and plan are created by community members who have both professional expertise and lived-experience with the issues they are addressing, Policy Codesign produces results that are both effective and sustainable.

What we hope to achieve

This project aims to produce a policy recommendation and implementation plan for youth mental health and substance use disorder prevention for K–12 schools.

How We hope to achieve it

As part of the first initiatives to implement the Strategic Plan, Washington Thriving has established a partnership with the CoLab for Community and Behavioral Health at the University of Washington (CoLab). Over the next 18 months, this partnership will help advance two of the first initiatives while also trying out an iterative, collaborative policy development, evaluation, and learning approach that can be built into the envisioned System of Care over time.

As part of Washington Thriving’s first initiatives, CoLab will begin work on two important facets of the System of Care: 

K-12 student well-being: Aligned with proposed legislation (HB1634), CoLab will work in partnership with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) as the sponsoring organization to co-develop a statewide technical assistance framework to support schools navigating the complex landscape of behavioral health, which is a critical factor in students’ learning readiness and well-being. Through an inclusive co-design process, CoLab and OSPI will work alongside students, families, educators, community and state partners to ensure that technical assistance responds to real needs on the ground, including by improving identification of and access to available behavioral health services, supports, and funding streams. 

System-level outcomes for System of Care infrastructure: To support Washington Thriving’s future performance measurement and accountability, CoLab will follow a similar inclusive co-design process to identify meaningful outcomes and metrics that reflect Washington Thriving values and implementation philosophy, are feasible to track and measure, and provide insight into how the system is performing.

Reports & Publications

CoLab will work closely with the Washington Thriving project team and leadership to ensure that the CYBHWG is consulted along the way and that the work stays aligned with emerging priorities and structures.