October 10 is World Mental Health Day. We're honoring this day by raising awareness about our amazing partners who demonstrate an ongoing commitment to improve and deliver quality and accessible mental health support services.
Improving mental health access for veterans
Soldier On is a nonprofit committed to ending veteran homelessness. The organization has partnered with LTI for almost two years, utilizing LTI’s telehealth solutions to host over 4,500 Teletherapy sessions with veterans. Soldier On’s Executive Director of Clinical Services and Certified Teletherapy Provider, Kevin Cahill, also uses LTI for consultations with the Veterans Treatment Court, Hampshire County Jail, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Berkshire Housing Association on a weekly basis.
“LTI’s partnership came at the right time for us, just before COVID-19 required social distancing precautions, which prevented us from meeting in person with veterans. The technology not only enabled us to continue to provide behavioral telemental health services but allowed us to meet more often. The technology also provides more eye contact and facial cueing, because you’re not monitoring the rest of the body," said Cahill.
Bridging the gap for children in need in Florida
First Lady Casey DeSantis launched the Hope for Healing Initiative in conjunction with the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF) and Big Bend Community Based Care (now NWF Health Network) to bring mental health support and services to children in need following Hurricane Michael.
LTI deployed more than 170 telehealth portals at the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, giving schools and communities the ability to receive mental, acute and emergency care on any device with a cellular or internet connection - putting real-time healthcare at every citizen’s fingertips instantaneously.
When COVID hit, and as students transitioned to virtual learning, they were able to continue connecting with their mental healthcare provider without leaving their homes. The program continues to support students -- LTI has recently expanded its program to five additional school districts in the Florida panhandle and others throughout the state of Florida including Orange County Schools, Brevard County schools and Broward county schools.
Bringing access to care to rural regions
The Nebraska Urban Indian Health Coalition (NUIHC) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that provides community health care and services targeting the urban American Indian and Alaska Native population in the greater Omaha and Lincoln metro regions in Nebraska, and Sioux City, Iowa metropolitan area. When faced with a pandemic and the need to provide behavioral health services remotely, the NUIHC researched solutions that would enable them to continue to serve the community safely and effectively.
“We knew telehealth was a great option to keep our community connected to support services during the pandemic, however we were not sure how much our organization would utilize telehealth for the long term,” said Kenneth “Beau” Boryca, Behavioral Health Director at NUIHC.
In order to justify the programming, the solution had to be easily accessible and compatible with the technology currently being leveraged by the community. This meant whether someone had a smartphone, a computer, or a tablet, they could access their therapy and health sessions easily and securely.
After researching telehealth training and hardware solutions, NUIHC learned about Let’s Talk Interactive’s virtual conferencing software which is compatible with any device that has internet access. “LTI partnered with us and offered around-the-clock support to enable us to set a simple workflow that worked for our organization. We were up and running in a matter of days,” added Boryca.
“We were able to continue to provide consistent support to our community throughout the pandemic thanks to Let’s Talk Interactive’s telehealth solutions. Telehealth is not going away - this is something we are going to continue to offer post-pandemic.”
Much work needs to be done in order to make health equity a reality. We'll continue to share the impact of our partnerships in the hopes of helping more organizations expand their reach to more people in need.