Developing a social determinants framework to assess youth mental health and wellness in Hennepin County, Minnesota

It is well understood that health outcomes are influenced by a variety of community-level social and economic factors, including poverty, residential segregation, educational attainment, employment, and racism. However, less attention has been paid to the community factors that influence mental health, particularly among youth.

Wilder Research was contracted by the Hennepin County Children's Mental Health Collaborative (Minneapolis, MN and surrounding suburbs) to develop a dashboard of indicators that could help collaborative members and policy makers have a shared understanding of the mental health needs of youth in the region and guide future initiatives to both address unmet needs and support the positive mental health of youth. Using the Georgetown Monograph, “A Public Health Approach to Children's Mental Health: A Conceptual Framework” to guide our work, we convened a multidisciplinary advisory group to develop a local framework to identify and assess the social determinants of mental health and prioritize key indicators to include in a dashboard.

In this presentation, we will share our framework for describing youth mental health and wellness and dashboard of community indicators. We will also share lessons learned along the way, including tips on engaging key stakeholders in the process and in using the dashboard as a tool to prioritize concerns and identify strategies to promote positive mental health and wellness among youth.