Project Summary:
Rural Wisconsin families are experiencing a mental health crisis—and they have the fewest resources to address it. Youth mental health emergencies have quadrupled in Wisconsin over the past decade, and a third of Wisconsin students feel sad or hopeless daily.
Rural communities face compounding barriers to care: Provider shortages, long waitlists, transportation challenges, and elevated rates of substance use and housing insecurity. For many rural families, high-quality mental health care feels out of reach. Schools have become the front line. They see students daily and are trusted in their communities—but they were not designed to deliver clinical care. Without licensed clinicians, crisis infrastructure, or data systems, schools struggle to meet the need, and students continue to fall through the cracks.
The Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance aims to partner with MCW and Cartwheel, a WI-licensed medical practice, to help rural schools ASSESS and ADDRESS mental health needs in their communities. We would partner with 50 rural schools enrolling 15,000 students in grades K-12 to do the following:
- To ADDRESS the need, we will equip schools with a HIPAA-compliant technology platform and connect students to Wisconsin-licensed clinicians—with no waitlists, no insurance barriers, and care available in 25+ languages. Cartwheel has successfully delivered this program in 2,000 schools nationwide and managed a pilot in 10 Wisconsin schools over the past two years to prepare for this MCW application.
- To ASSESS the need, we will implement a rigorous data collection platform in every school to track mental health trends and the impact of the telehealth initiative on student health and educational outcomes.
This data will help schools make data-driven decisions and create a novel statewide dataset to inform policy and practice. By working through schools—trusted community anchors—this project advances health equity where it is needed most.
Community Partner: CESA 4