3 - (Sym 53) Telehealth ROCKS: A School-based Telehealth Model to Support Rural Children and Families

Background: Rural youth experience disparities in accessing mental, behavioral, and physical healthcare. Rural youth have more difficulty accessing mental and behavioral health specialists. Before the pandemic, over 86% of Kansas was designated as a health shortage area. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated existing mental and physical health disparities and led to new challenges, particularly for youth and families impacted by trauma in rural and underserved communities. 

Method: The Telehealth Rural Outreach to Children of Kansas Schools (ROCKS) Project is supported by HRSA and SAMHSA and affiliated with a midwest regional medical center. It has focused on providing school-based specialty telebehavioral health services to rural youth and families and professional development opportunities for service providers and educators on evidence-based cognitive and behavioral practices. We describe how the project’s unique components and strategies facilitate disseminating and implementing evidence-based cognitive and behavioral practices in rural communities.  

Results: The Telehealth ROCKS project strives to make a positive impact on rural youth and families through providing school-based specialty telebehavioral health services, stakeholder engagement, education and mentoring, and workforce building. We provide a menu of evidence-based specialty services (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy tailored for youth with developmental disabilities, applied behavior analysis, and PCIT). Using Project ECHO, we created a virtual diverse learning community (964 registrations in total for the year 2021-2022 and 158 unique zip codes), linking rural Midwest communities with experts in the field located at a centralized medical center on various topics, including disaster and trauma response (e.g., PFA, SPR),  suicide prevention, and pandemic response. 

Conclusion: The project’s unique components and strategies emphasized the importance of dissemination and implementation and engaging community stakeholders to increase access to evidence-based services, particularly in the context of a pandemic.