A Community Project to Enhance Mental Well-Being

Blaine County’s Mental Well-Being Initiative[i] seeks to grow an integrated mental health and well-being ecosystem that improves the lives of all people in our community. Spearheaded by the St. Luke’s Wood River Foundation in response to a clear need for improved mental health resources, the Mental Well-Being Initiative (MWBI) is a collaboration of over 50 partners—including local government, healthcare, nonprofit, education, business, and religious organizations—working to achieve a shared vision.

Our vision is bold: Make it possible for everyone in our community to achieve mental well-being. Success will require the support and collaboration of every part of our community.

Coming Together to Create Solutions

In 2023, the St. Luke’s Wood River Foundation convened various stakeholders and community members to map our well-being ecosystem – from prevention and intervention to treatment and recovery – with the goal of identifying strengths that could be amplified and vital gaps that could be filled. Based on input from the community, the MWBI will implement solutions in five key areas:

1. Create a multitude of welcoming community-connecting environments and activities to encourage belonging among teens and cross-generational connections throughout the community.

2. Build a robust, comprehensive community training and education program focused on resiliency, self-regulation, healthy communication, and crisis de-escalation.

3. Increase behavioral health access and capacity for individuals and families by identifying and addressing inadequacies within the system and building out the necessary behavioral health workforce.

4. Create a 24-hour mobile mental health crisis response system and crisis stabilization options.

5. Build the infrastructure required to sustain a collective impact approach to prioritize our community’s mental health as essential to our overall health.

Early Initiatives

In September 2024, the Foundation awarded a series of initial grants aligned with the community’s strategic goals:

• Spanish-Language Counseling Services: We launched a pilot of Sanarai, an online therapy platform offering mental health support in Spanish from culturally aligned providers. Services are accessed through partner organizations including The Hunger Coalition, Family Health Services, St. Luke’s Center for Community Health, and The Alliance of Idaho.

• Patient Financial Assistance: $41,000 was allocated to the St. Luke’s Center for Community Health Counseling Scholarship Fund to help remove cost barriers to care.

• Mindfulness Education: A multi-year grant is expanding mindfulness programs in local K-2 classrooms through the Flourish Foundation and providing a nine-month mindfulness cohort for 12 local educators.

• Shared Data & Benchmarking: MWBI joined the Katz Amsterdam Foundation’s Shared Measurement Framework to track and compare behavioral health data with other mountain communities.

Building on this early momentum, the Foundation committed an additional $4.43 million over four years to the Mental Well-Being Initiative in early 2025. This transformative investment will fund key staff positions to lead coordination across prevention, treatment, and intervention efforts. It also includes support for a behavioral health clinician who will serve on a new crisis response team in partnership with the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office. In addition, the commitment will reduce financial barriers to care, launch a community-wide mental health training initiative, and strengthen youth engagement and connection efforts. Funding will also support the development of a peer support program for first responders and the creation of a Community Well-Being website to increase public awareness and access to local mental health resources. This investment lays the foundation for a future behavioral health center with crisis response services—bringing our community closer to a fully integrated, responsive mental health system.

Together, these efforts are reshaping how Blaine County addresses mental health—building the infrastructure, coordination, and partnerships needed for long-term, collective impact.

What’s next?

We’re building on strong momentum—and we’re just getting started. Our community has made it clear: we must keep mental health a priority and create the structure to make collaboration possible. The Mental Well-Being Initiative began as a project of the St. Luke’s Wood River Foundation and is now evolving into a new nonprofit designed to sustain and grow this work long-term.

With more than 50 partner organizations, we’re fulfilling Goal 5 of our community’s mental health strategic plan—creating the infrastructure needed to support coordinated action across prevention, access, and crisis response. As we move into this next phase, MWBI will continue to serve as the backbone of our shared efforts—helping partners stay aligned, tracking progress, raising and aligning funding, and keeping momentum going.

To support this transition, we’re hiring a Prevention Program Manager and a Behavioral Health Program Manager. You can view the full job descriptions [HERE].

We invite everyone who cares about mental health in Blaine County to stay engaged. Whether through your time, talent, or resources, there’s a role for you in building a thriving, connected, and mentally well community.

Learn more

You can find more information about the Mental Well-Being Initiative HERE, including the “Roadmap,” Community Partner Pledge, community data sources, an introduction to the collective impact approach, and examples of mental health initiatives in other mountain towns.

For more information about Blaine County’s Mental Well-Being Initiative Email Project Director Jenna Vagias