About This Platform
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We're nurse practitioners from the UMass Medical School Graduate School of Nursing. You asked, we listened. Around January 2024, we surveyed Cape Cod Tech students and worked with 5 interns across CCT and Barnstable High School. You all voiced a huge need for a mental health platform that focuses on some difficult-to-tackle mental health topics and available resources. As asked, we have put together an online platform filled “bite-sized,” evidence-based content, such as how-to guides, toolkits, and short videos, and resources to help better understand where to go and what to do when facing a mental health-related issue.
​This is a start, and there is a lot to come! In the meantime, we hope you find this tool helpful. ​
MHM History
Since 2023, Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students from the University of Massachusetts Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing have partnered with the New England Rural Health Association (NERHA), Cape Cod Technical (CCT) High School, the Visiting Nurses Association (VNA), and Outer Cape Health Services (OCHS) to better understand and address the needs of Cape Cod’s adolescent population.
With the support from the NERHA’s inaugural Rural Community Health Scholarship Award, the UMass team launched an internship program for five Cape Cod adolescents from diverse backgrounds. This program focused on exploring mental health access and awareness within the community, while also helping the team design a mental health resource aimed at engaging adolescents across Cape Cod. Based on feedback from 65 CCT student surveys over two years, as well as valuable insights from five high school interns, it became clear that these students are not only deeply motivated to drive change within their communities, but also possess remarkable perspectives on what is needed to bring that change to fruition. The feedback has shown that students seek more information on sensitive topics such as ADHD, depression, eating disorders, relationship and intimacy issues, intimate partner violence, peer support, self-harm awareness, harm reduction, trauma, and managing isolation. The majority of students expressed a strong desire for an online platform offering easily digestible, evidence-based resources, including how-to guides, toolkits, and short videos, to help them better understand and access mental health services.
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Mental Health Matters underscores the powerful impact of involving adolescents in shaping their own mental health care. By including them in the quality improvement process, the voices and experiences of young people are placed at the forefront. Empowering peers to support one another not only amplifies student voices but also sparks increased engagement, demonstrating adolescents’ potential to drive meaningful change in their communities. Mental Health Matters was created to foster a culture of openness and inclusivity while restoring autonomy to adolescents—enabling them to collaborate and determine their own needs. Through the UMass DNP Scholarly Project, DNP students will continue to work alongside stakeholders and high school interns to refine, enhance, and implement this platform. We envision this initiative and model expanding well beyond the Cape Cod community.​
Funding Support
This initiative has been funded through the New England Rural Health Association's first Rural Community Health Scholarship Award in 2024
Stakeholders
