INNOVATION & CROSS-DISCIPLINARY SOLUTIONS

How Marketing and Communications Outreach Can Help Close Gaps in Children’s Mental Health Awareness

The United States is facing a looming crisis in regard to children’s mental health, and health systems must bridge the “access gap” that exists to ensure parents and caregivers can support the mental health and wellness of children and youth, according to representatives of Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Kids Mental Health Foundation, who spoke during the SHSMD Connections Conference 2024, in Denver.

Although marketing and communications professionals within health systems can’t provide the needed care themselves, obviously, they are able to ensure patients and their caregivers have access to accurate information about mental health challenges that may be affecting the young people in their lives and know where to find vital resources, says co-presenter Donna Teach, Chief Marketing & Communication Officer, Nationwide Children’s Hospital/The Kids Mental Health Foundation, both of which are based in Columbus, Ohio.

To do so, “we need to use our own platforms and partner with community organizations to prevent misinformation and [enhance] access to better resources to the public,” adds Breanne Taylor, Administrative Director, Nationwide Children’s Hospital/The Kids Mental Health Foundation, the other co-presenter for the session.

The Challenge

As Teach and Taylor put it, children’s mental health concerns have been “hiding in plain sight for many years, surrounded by confusion and stigma.” Data suggest that, nationally, 1 in 5 children has a mental health disorder, with about half of all lifetime mental illnesses starting before the age of 14 years. Of note, only half of all children in the United States with a mental illness get the treatment they need, with an average time between the appearance of initial symptoms to treatment of more than 10 years.

Much of this undertreatment (or delayed treatment) occurs as a result of stigma. Many children and their caregivers fear that young people battling mental illness will be labeled and/or judged for their condition. Understanding the mental health system and various care options is low in many communities across the country, according to Taylor.

That said, the majority of parents and teachers understand the importance of the issue. Recent studies from the Kids Mental Health Foundation indicate that 93% of parents of kids under 18 years of age believe it’s important for parents and caregivers to talk to their children about mental health, but 59% say they need help knowing how to start the conversation.

“The majority of people know we need to be talking about this, … [but they] just don’t know how to do it,” Taylor explains.

Unfortunately, with only one child psychiatrist for every 15,000 children in the United States, treatment alone will not solve the crisis.

“There’s a huge access gap … and other escalating challenges,” Taylor notes. As a result, “we don’t have the resources to treat our way out of this problem.”

These days, when resources and information aren’t available, people will turn to the internet and social media for guidance—and mental health tips are ubiquitous on multiple platforms, according to Taylor. For example, TikTok videos with #mentalhealth in the caption have earned more than 43.9 billion views over the course of the platform’s history, and mentions of mental health on social media are increasing every year.

However, social media apps are not designed to prioritize accurate, helpful information, but rather drive traffic to trending topics, Taylor says.

For example, a study conducted by the organization Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) found that of the 100 most popular TikTok videos on ADHD, 52% featured misleading information.

“Misinformation can lead to bad outcomes, turning adults and caregivers in the wrong direction and doing more harm than good,” Taylor explains.

Nationwide’s “Strategic Plan” for Mental Health

As the second largest children’s hospital in the United States and a national leader in pediatric research, Nationwide Children’s knew it had a platform to raise awareness of this important issue and become a reliable source of information for parents/caregivers, educators and community leaders.

Hospital leadership also recognized the significant need and included behavioral health as one of three key accelerator programs in its strategic plan, which was developed in 2016 (and will be updated later this year), according to Taylor.

For mental health, the strategic plan includes the following goals:

With these goals, Nationwide Children’s overall aspiration was to develop a national model for pediatric behavioral and mental health care, Taylor explains.

The commitment was cemented with the opening of the Big Lots Behavioral Health Pavilion in March 2020: Big Lots, a discount retail chain headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, had an interest in devoting cause marketing resources to the issue of mental health in young people, making them an excellent partner, Teach says.

However, the hospital’s public-facing efforts really began two years earlier, with the local launch of the “On Our Sleeves” awareness campaign on World Mental Health Day in 2018. The campaign featured the tagline: “Because we don’t wear our thoughts on our sleeves, it’s time to give children a voice … and transform mental health.”

The campaign was focused on the idea of stigma-breaking and was designed to encourage parents to lean in to the mental health needs of their children, Teach says.

Response to the campaign was immediate and significant, according to Teach, and highlighted the specific elements to a successful outreach initiative. First, says Teach, the team learned the importance of managing content needs for any campaign, particularly digital outreach.

“Content is a beast,” she notes. With any clinical content, “you have to make sure it’s evidenced and informed” in order to maintain credibility.

Campaign content should also feature clear messaging that is not about driving volume to the health system but rather has a wellness focus, she adds.

Once the campaign is launched, a health system needs to ensure it’s capable of meeting demands of the community in terms of:

“Based on the volume of calls we were getting once the campaign launched, we knew we had … touched on an unmet need,” Teach recalls.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Nationwide Children’s outreach evolved from a “local, stigma-breaking campaign to a national cause platform focused on education and resources,” she adds.

With children at home because schools were closed, the hospital’s outreach pivoted to a digital platform, with resources and education for parents, according to Teach.

The goal of all the hospital’s outreach—which, in addition to web-based programs includes a free weekly newsletter and recommended curriculum and materials for educators—is enhancing “mental health literacy to give parents and caregivers skills and tools to communicate about mental health in their families,” Teach notes. “Out of this, really, came the core pillars for who and what we are from a content perspective, with a stigma-breaking focus—also, that kids need to have a voice.”

To optimize the development, scheduling and targeting of outreach, Teach, Taylor and their team build an annual content calendar (Figure) that outlines the focus of events every month and includes initiatives in keeping with the plan’s key themes: reducing stigma and developing mental health literacy and teaching mental wellness skills.

“And we pull those themes through our content curriculum,” Teach explains.

Nationwide Children’s expanded On Our Sleeves as The Kids Mental Health Foundation in May 2024 (Mental Health Awareness Month) to create a national organization dedicated to educating the public about the challenges related to children’s mental health. The Foundation works with other health systems, educators and community organizations to “expand the impact” of the hospital’s outreach, Teach says, and “position [these efforts] as a collective.” This includes partnering with other health organizations across the country and allowing them to co-brand resources developed by The Kids Mental Health Foundation in their local markets, Taylor adds. Nationwide Children’s and the Foundation hope to ramp up more partnership opportunities for licensing, funding and/or education in 2025.

“We now have resources and curricula that are in all 50 states, and I’m really proud that we’ve had more than 18 million people interact with our free content,” Teach notes. “We really want to create a generation that sees physical and mental health as equally important.”