With scores of partners and communities over these formative years, we have translated these spiritual values into public policies, organizational practice changes, and catalytic investments that are saving lives. This includes the founding and strengthening of a half-dozen new organizations and alliances, which together are working to measurably increase affordable access to compassionate whole-person care, and creating the community conditions for human flourishing.

In many ways, Well Being Trust is just getting started, even as our Foundresses have served this mission for nearly two centuries. Please read this 2021 Annual Report less as a look-back and set of accomplishments (even as there is much to celebrate)—rather, as an invitation to join us and our partners in a next chapter of service to advance the mental, social, and spiritual health of the United States.

StrengthIn.Us
Recognize the strength in you to create a helping moment

StrengthIn.Us is a new approach that helps us all know what to do to help others around us. This week, Well Being Trust, alongside key partners, launched the second phase of StrengthIn.Us, a movement of communities caring for our mental health. 

Recognizing the need to reimagine mental health support and service delivery to meet people where they are, Well Being Trust initiated a partnership with Harvard Medical School in 2021 to develop a model of care that enables and empowers individuals in communities to identify and respond to the mental health and addiction needs of those around them, rooted in existing assets.

StrengthIn.Us is based on the community-initiated care (CIC) approach, which leverages a practice known as “task-sharing” that has been implemented successfully internationally for mental health promotion, prevention, and low-intensity intervention that does not depend solely on clinicians. Rather, non-specialized, trained members of the community are the heartbeat of StrengthIn.Us.

Our partners in the StrengthIn.Us effort include Empower, The George Washington University, and the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing.

The new StrengthIn.Us website features:

• A series of short vignettes highlighting the preliminary method behind community initiated care.
• An invitation to pilot StrengthIn.Us and to join us in applying this work in communities across the country.
• Watch Video: Community engagement in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 
• Watch Video: StrengthIn.Us - Building the movement of communities caring for our mental health

A New Framework for Alternative Payment Models

In partnership with Well Being Trust, the Eugene S. Farley, Jr. Health Policy Center and the Practice Innovation Program at the University of Colorado released The Building Blocks of Behavioral Health Integration: A Framework for Care Delivery Expectations. This new framework provides flexible options for primary care clinics to integrate behavioral health services that could be utilized as part of alternative payment models supporting whole-person care and it aligns expectations across payers, practices, and patients.

“Almost all people will experience a need for mental health or addiction services within their lifetimes, but many are unable to access this care,” said Benjamin F. Miller, PsyD, president, Well Being Trust. “Primary care is generally the first place people come to with any health issue. Bringing mental health clinicians onsite into primary care allows for a more seamless and integrated approach to care that’s better for the patient and their family.”