The Military Child & Family Collaboratory: A Content Analysis of Collective Impact Actions for Youth Mental Health, Emotional, Development, and Behavioral Needs

The United States is experiencing a youth mental health crisis, which is exacerbated for military-connected children because of frequent relocations and parental deployments. Despite universal healthcare, military-connected children report more mental health and special healthcare needs than their civilian peers, highlighting a gap that impacts family well-being and military readiness. To address this challenge, over 70 organizations formed the Military Child and Family Collaboratory (MCFC), a research Collaboratory operating within a collective impact framework. The MCFC developed guidance on collaboration, shared measurement and a common agenda to improve the mental, emotional, developmental, and behavioral (MEDB) health of military-connected youth. The collective impact framework requires diverse stakeholders to address distinct components of the issue. To assess the extent to which Collaboratory member organizations, and thus the collective impact framework, address the diversity of youth needs, researchers utilized a deductive content analysis of program descriptions, aligning them with 8 domains of youth well-being.

Using Krippendorff's guidelines, researchers purposively sampled publicly available programs from the websites of 72 member organizations for a final sample of 252, which were coded into 8 domains of youth well-being. Two raters independently coded the units with an interrater reliability of 95.6%. Researchers calculated the frequency of programs within each domain, and coded the program beneficiaries as either direct-for military families-or systemic-for clinical care. To assess alignment with Collaboratory initiatives, researchers coded the function of the program as research (i.e., research dissemination), training (i.e., provider training), or implementation (i.e., resource dissemination).

The content analysis revealed a strong alignment between the activities of Collaboratory member programs and youth well-being; all 8 domains were addressed. There was a concentration of programs in Mental and Behavioral Health (n = 90, 35.7%) and Community and Belonging (n = 89, 35.3%), followed by Social Networks and Relationships (n = 22, 8.7%), Education and Learning (n = 22, 8.7%), Economic Stability (n = 16, 6.3%), Physical Health (n = 8, 3.2%), Physical and Psychological Safety (n = 4, 1.6%), and Sense of Purpose (n = 1, 0.4%). Additionally, 46.4% (n = 117) of programs were direct and 53.6% (n = 135) of programs were systemic, with a statistically significant difference between beneficiary types across domains X2 (7, n = 252) = 43.14, P < .001. Further, 62.7% (n = 158) of programs were implementation-focused, 19.1% (n = 48) of programs were research-focused, and 18.5% (n = 46) of programs were training-focused.

Findings illustrate alignment between Collaboratory program activities and the common agenda, with a focus on Mental and Behavioral Health, as well as the diversity of programs supporting all 8 domains of youth well-being. This study highlights the importance of the Collaboratory's collective impact model, which creates space for innovative solutions and ensures they are strategically coordinated for optimal resource allocation and program reach. Future studies may directly measure youth well-being outcomes associated with the programs and evaluate strategies to build partner capacity and mutual engagement.