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Two years ago, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) launched its Adolescent Behavioral Health Initiative (ABHI) to improve access to effective services from crisis to stabilizationamong adolescents experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis in Allegheny County. The ABHI is guided by a 40-member advisory committee and is supported by JHF, the Staunton Farm Foundation, and The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Since then, JHF has engaged state and county leaders, mental health and substance use providers, social service representatives, family and patient advocates, educators, health plan representatives, nonprofit leaders, and researchers. Through these conversations, the Foundation has developed a community-driven policy agenda to create the strong adolescent behavioral health safety net that teens and families in crisis deserve.

You can learn more about that policy agenda—and how you can join adolescent behavioral health advocacy efforts—in a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed written by Robert Ferguson, MPH, the Foundation’s Director of Government Grants and Policy. JHF also thanks Pittsburgh Mercy COO and Health Careers Futures Board Trustee Raymond Wolfe for writing a letter of support for the initiative.