Significant progress made to overcome greatest challenges, including children’s mental health, COVID-19 response, and workforce shortages.
West Palm Beach, Fla.– When BeWellPBC launched in February 2019, it set out to create a movement to transform behavioral health and wellness in Palm Beach County. Recognizing the need for coordination at all levels of the community to ensure comprehensive care for children and families, nine invested partners joined together to fund BeWellPBC and its efforts to improve interagency coordination and alignment of behavioral health services and more widely engage community members in grassroots solutions. As BeWellPBC marks its third anniversary, the initiative is celebrating the impact it has made locally, and the national recognition it has received.
BeWellPBC’s focus areas are significant, with solutions intended to have short and long-term effects. The demand for greater resources for children and youth, the shortage of behavioral health professionals, and the need for greater coordination and alignment among systems are not new challenges. But what is novel is BeWellPBC’s approach. The initiative brings together 50% “learned experts” with 50% “lived experts” to co-design community solutions together. Action committees unite Palm Beach County’s health care systems, providers, and funders together with those directly impacted by behavioral health—parents, youth, teachers, clergy, business owners and grassroots community leaders—to create the change they want to see in their families, schools, workplaces, and cities.
“BeWellPBC is a movement driven by lived and learned experts who work together with shared purpose to transform behavioral health and wellness in Palm Beach County,” said Lauren Zuchman, executive director of BeWellPBC. “Residents and system leaders are uniting in their vision for building a culture of health and wellness and co-designing solutions grounded in equity, access, community healing, and behavioral health awareness.”
With a staff of three and over 100 volunteer action team members, BeWellPBC has made significant progress since 2019 by coordinating the efforts of dedicated stewards to create new solutions locally, with some having statewide impact. Examples include:
- Workforce Pipeline: Behavioral Health Focused School Project
Data from Kaiser Family Foundation shows the current supply of Florida’s working mental health professionals meets only 16.9% of the state’s need. BeWellPBC is partnering with the School District of Palm Beach County’s Allied Health and Behavioral and Mental Health Departments and community partners to build the workforce pipeline at the front end by developing a behavioral health curriculum for the district’s medical academies. Once approved, high school students will be able to work towards a career in the field through instruction and internship opportunities. In addition, the Florida Certification Board is working with BeWellPBC and partners to design a new state certification attainable by recently graduated high school students.
- Stewardship Coordination & Alignment: Pediatric Integrated Care Innovation
Studies show that 75% of children under age 18 present to primary care for psychiatric care needs. BeWellPBC is taking action to advance pediatric integrated care (primary care integrated with behavioral health) in Palm Beach County and contribute to Florida-wide efforts. Together with Mental Health America of the Palm Beaches, BeWellPBC provides technical and facilitation support for the Pediatric Integrated Care Community of Practice Project, two pediatrician pilot offices that are coming together with a multi-agency workgroup to identify opportunities and challenges for their practices, address specific systemic barriers to integrated care, and document a standard for care that is scalable for other practices.
- Community Solutions: Stewards Coming Together During COVID-19
Estimates of Americans with mental illness were trending upward even before COVID-19. BeWellPBC’s stewards remained committed during the pandemic, supporting local BeWell Club start-ups in the Glades and Boynton Beach, and they were fundamental to creating the county’s new Rapid Response Team with partners Palm Health Foundation, Community Partners of South Florida, Volunteer Nurse Corps, and Healthier Together communities to respond in real-time to needs shared by residents during the pandemic. Through Be Well Do Well Mini-Grants, BeWellPBC also invested $50,000 in the innovative ideas of residents and organizations to build more equitable and inclusive behavioral health support, promote workforce wellness, and focus on residents most in need.
BeWellPBC’s Community Solutions Action Team has also played a critical role in bridging community and systems and reducing stigma, including:
- Community Connectors, BeWellPBC’s ambassadors, host virtual “Couch Conversations” open to the community between residents and system leaders and produce a video series highlighting behavioral health topics and resources.
- Students Connect, a student-led club supported by BeWellPBC, is developing curricula for a teen-to-teen behavioral health training that will be offered to groups serving teens in 2022.
- The Well of PBC, an online publication launched by BeWellPBC in 2021, serves to be the primary resource for behavioral health and wellness for Palm Beach County, a safe exchange space for the community, and an outlet for neighbors and stakeholders to transform the behavioral health landscape.
BeWellPBC’s innovative approach and rapid progress has caught the attention of national leaders, including ReThink Health, an initiative of the Rippel Foundation. They chose BeWellPBC and Palm Beach County for a two-year project to explore what it takes to reallocate resources to create more equitable regional systems for health and well-being. Together with project partners Palm Health Foundation, Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County, and Palm Beach County’s Youth Services and Community Services Departments, they have been on the cutting edge of exploring how communities can shift from investing in urgent services to vital conditions (e.g., humane housing, basic needs, and meaningful work) knowing that as vital conditions improve, urgent services are less needed, and residents are better positioned to thrive. The findings of the project will be shared nationally.
“We attribute our progress to systems and residents working together toward a shared vision in which every person in Palm Beach County feels hopeful, supported, connected and empowered,” said Zuchman. “Change takes dedication and courage. We are grateful to our invested partners and the dozens of stewards working with BeWellPBC to transform behavioral health and wellness for today, and generations to come.”
BeWellPBC’s invested partners/funders are: The Celia Lipton Farris and Victor W. Farris Foundation, Southeast Florida Behavioral Health Network, Palm Health Foundation, Palm Beach County, Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County, Quantum Foundation, United Way of Palm Beach County, Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties, and the Merrell Family Foundation.
