Sometimes change begins with a cup of coffee.
In April 2023, the Suicide Prevention Collaborative of El Paso County (The Collaborative), an initiative facilitated and supported by Community Health Partnership (CHP), identified the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) as a priority in its work. The data collected from the anonymous, confidential survey measures the number of youth engaging in health-risk and health-promoting behaviors. Strong participation in surveys like HKCS ensures communities have the funding and resources necessary to plan programs and services for youth.
When the Colorado Springs School District 11 (D11) Board of Education made the decision to shift the survey from a parental “opt out” to an “opt in,” it raised concerns in the community. A similar opt-in system in New Hampshire reduced survey response rates from roughly 80% to 20%. In response to this change in policy, and in support of The Collaborative’s work, the CHP board of directors co-signed a letter urging the school board to reconsider. They were joined in this effort by El Paso County Coroner, Dr. Leon Kelly, who also wrote a letter.
These letters prompted D11 Board President Dr. Parth Melpakam to invite CHP CEO Amber Ptak to have a conversation over coffee about CHP’s position. For Ptak, the meeting was not just professional, it was personal. Her child is a D11 student and she was well aware of the challenges the district and its students were facing. Still, she went in with an open mind and a willingness to lean into a potentially difficult conversation. It turns out, so did Dr. Melpakam.
“I had my own assumptions and beliefs coming in,” says Ptak. “But as we talked, it was clear that he really cares about the students and wants to ensure their mental and physical safety. At the same time, he’s balancing the needs of parents, teachers, and staff. I felt a lot of empathy for him.”
That initial cup of coffee led to another larger conversation with Ptak, Dr. Melpakam, D11 Superintendent Michael Gaal, Abbie Mobalade, and Nicole Johnston, CHP’s project manager for The Collaborative. Despite their differences, they were able to find common ground to work from: the mental health and wellbeing of students, families, and D11’s employees.
“Everybody wants kids to be healthy,” says Superintendent Gaal. “We as individuals fall in love with a certain strategy instead of with our shared “why.” And I really think, in our relationship with CHP and with Dr. Kelly, we let go of the strategy, and we refocused on the ’why.’”
Convening & Engaging
CHP’s mission is to transform the way people work together to solve complex community health issues like mental health and suicide. Rather than developing and implementing solutions in isolation, CHP supports individuals and organizations in co-creating transformative solutions. Because of this unique position in the community, D11’s administrative leadership asked CHP to convene and facilitate a process with community partners and D11 staff to assess how they could work in a different, more effective way to provide additional mental health and wellbeing support.
“It never occurred to us to say no,” Ptak remembers. “Not only had working with a large school district been a goal of the Suicide Prevention Collaborative, it also strongly aligned with CHP’s mission and the ways we work in the community.”
Johnston agrees that it was an opportunity they had to take. “For a large system to say, ‘We’re going to create more effective ways to prioritize mental health and suicide prevention,’ it’s significant. In addition to helping students and families, their commitment could help us expand to the other 17 districts throughout the county. This is the type of systems change leadership we hope to see in this community.”
Over the next several months, Ptak and Johnston leaned heavily into CHP’s ways of working by listening, learning, convening, and engaging. They brought together representatives from the Suicide Prevention Collaborative, El Paso County Public Health’s Youth Suicide Prevention Workgroup, Pikes Peak Suicide Prevention Partnership (PPSPP), and D11 to understand and address the need. Ultimately, an Exploration Team was formed to assess existing assets in D11 and develop recommendations for a Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan.
From Patchwork to Progress
Essential to the plan was catalyzing or expanding relationships between D11 and community partners. The goal was for D11 to collaborate more closely with these partners to realize a long-term plan to support the D11 community.
Gaal believes partnerships are key to addressing the complex issues the district faces. After a decade in public education, Gaal explains that public schools have an “unfunded mandate” to solve a wide variety of problems outside of the scope of education. Districts are simply not funded or organized in a way that allows them to effectively and equitably address these issues alone.
While mental health programming does exist in D11 schools, it is often “patchwork” and arises out of individual relationships, according to Gaal. “You end up with large gaps in the system. We don’t have a set of instructions on how the staff navigates the patchwork that exists. And, more importantly, how does the student and/or the family get access to that roadmap?”
Gaal says that data is often used to point out how schools are failing and what needs to be fixed without offering ideas or solutions, but that paradigm shifted when CHP came into the picture.
“They were saying, ‘Wait a second. We can use the data to drive new relationships and partnerships.’ I already knew the need, but now CHP is helping me get the means to match that need.”
Around the time the report and recommendations were completed, Johnston received a call from Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office. The Attorney General was traveling the state visiting school districts to understand their challenges, successes, and needs around mental health. Because Attorney General Weiser had worked with Johnston on other issues locally and statewide, his office reached out to ask if she could suggest a local school district in Colorado Springs for him to engage.
On Johnston’s recommendation, the Attorney General met with a group from D11, including Superintendent Gaal, Dr. Melpakam, CHP, and others who had contributed to the final report. It was a unique opportunity to spotlight the robust, comprehensive, collaborative approach they developed to address the mental health and wellbeing of D11 students, staff, leadership, and parents and caregivers.
Learning While Leading
Although CHP is experienced in bringing people together, facilitating difficult conversations, and helping groups work toward a common goal, this was the first time it had done so with a large organization not under its own umbrella. So, not only were Johnston and Ptak helping guide the group, they were also doing a lot of strategic learning along the way.
“It was messy at times and the ultimate outcome wasn’t always clear, so I had to learn to trust the process,” Ptak notes. She also shares that it was a good reminder to her of the importance of empathy, active listening, and being aware of how one’s own intentions can impact the work.
Reflecting on the journey, Johnston says there are certain CHP practices that weren’t as deeply integrated as she would have liked. Incorporating diverse voices, opinions, and ideas is a cornerstone of CHP’s work.
“It made all the difference to have community partners and key staff involved in the process,” she says, “but ideally, if we’d had more time and resources, we would have convened parents, students, and teachers, too. Thankfully, there is still time to do more of that going forward.”
The Power of Everyone
Fortunately, the process doesn’t need to be perfect to be effective. By saying “yes,” first to a cup of coffee and then to a partnership with D11, CHP went beyond just writing a letter to facilitating systems change.
“Taking a systems change approach is the most important advocacy we can do,” says Nicole. “And working with one of the largest school districts in the county has the potential to go beyond D11. I’d love for every school district in El Paso County to implement a mental health and wellbeing plan.”
Thanks to the partnership and close relationship with D11, that dream is one step closer to happening. On May 10, CHP is set to discuss its partnership with D11 at the Pikes Peak Area Superintendents Association meeting.
For Gaal, the partnership demonstrates how much potential there is for change when individuals find a way to stop pointing fingers and instead join hands around a problem.
“We (D11 and CHP) started in a conflict and ended in a partnership,” Gaal says. “Now, when I get an email from Dr. Kelly or Amber Ptak or Nicole Johnston, I can’t wait to open it because I know it’s going to be something new and exciting that’s going to help solve a problem for a single student or even an entire generation of kids. When you think about the power of everyone surrounding a problem, there’s no problem you can’t overcome.”
