Healthy minds/healthy children outreach service: lessons learned after eight years

This article describes the Healthy Minds/Healthy Children Outreach Service (HMHC), an ongoing clinical and educational outreach service which makes use of technology to bridge geographical barriers to help build capacity in front-line professionals to meet children's mental health needs in rural areas.

A description of the HMHC clinical consultation and educational services is given. Utilization patterns of these services are reviewed.

Clinical service accounts for approximately 1/3 of the service's activities. Continuing professional development has experienced strong growth since the program's inception eight years ago. The majority of consultees and continuing professional development users have been non-physicians.

Future challenges for program development include increasing physician involvement and continuing to adapt the program's continuing education program to the multidisciplinary professionals who provide support to children in rural areas. Measuring the program's outcome in terms of its effect on clinical care through knowledge transfer has been difficult to do because of methodological research challenges, while successful research in this area will be helpful to determine how collaborative care models can help in the provision of mental health services to youth in rural communities. The growth of collaboration across various professional disciplines and service sectors demonstrates that programs like HMHC can be effective in meeting some of the unmet needs in providing mental health services to children and youth.