We are developing a best practices repository: a comprehensive, sustainable, publicly accessible repository of evidence about the effectiveness of public health, preventive interventions (programs, services, policies) that address college student mental wellbeing. A key component of the repository is a dynamic learning network, allowing colleges and universities to learn from one another about promising efforts across the country.
Our work to date includes a growing portfolio of reports and research briefs that synthesize the evidence base for supporting student mental health in higher education. These include:
The next steps for this initiative will include developing additional reports that synthesize the evidence on a broader range of interventions that support student mental health, such as belonging, mentoring, suicide prevention, and sexual violence prevention, with an emphasis on addressing the needs of diverse student populations. Another important next step is to convert the information in these reports to “living” information resources on a website, where we will update the evidence frequently as it evolves.
The best practices repository originated from our team at the Healthy Minds Network, and is in partnership with the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs. The work has been informed by conversations with many other leading organizations focused on student mental health, and we look forward to continuing to develop the repository in partnership with these organizations.
The proposed repository and network will represent a novel and highly significant contribution to the current landscape of student mental health. Currently there are no comprehensive databases or repositories of evidence regarding what works for student mental health interventions in higher education. Furthermore, the proposed repository will be different from most existing repositories for other topics and populations in that it will be paired with an active learning network.
As a public, national resource emphasizing a population-level, public health approach, this initiative has potential to benefit millions of students at thousands of institutions each year.
For questions or comments on the proposed repository, please contact one of our project leads: Daniel Eisenberg (Healthy Minds Network and UCLA; [email protected]); Sarah Ketchen Lipson (Healthy Minds Network and Boston University; [email protected]); and Sara Abelson (Hope Center for Student Basic Needs and Temple University; [email protected]). Other key team members include Ashley Johnston (UCLA).