Dr. Heather Littleton, Director of Research Operations, and Dr. Bernard Ricca, Research Associate Professor, both from the Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience, along with graduate student Alex Stover, recently formed a partnership with Children’s Hospital of Colorado (CHCO) staff and administrators to conduct research and program evaluation of resilience programming being delivered in Colorado Springs area schools by CHCO staff.

This partnership will facilitate research into longer-term outcomes of this programming, which includes a universal resilience coaching program being offered to 6th-grade children in six schools in the Colorado Springs area. In addition to examining the impact of the intervention on child-reported depression, anxiety, and self-efficacy, the intervention’s impact on academic (e.g., engagement) and health (e.g., ER visits) outcomes will be evaluated. Littleton said, “The Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience is excited to be partnering with CHCO on the Building Resilience for Healthy Kids Program. There are huge gaps in services addressing children’s mental health needs, which have only increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The programs being offered by CHCO could serve as a model for how to address some of these gaps via both prevention programming and reducing children’s barriers to receipt of mental health care by delivering these services within schools.”  In addition to providing resilience coaching, CHCO mental health specialists are embedded in eight area schools, circumventing many of the barriers to access to mental health care faced by children. Individual, school, and community-level outcomes of this program will also be evaluated. 

To learn about other research going on at the Institute, visit our Active Research webpage.