Children / Child Welfare | Health
Deepening CX100’s Partnership with Communities

Over the last few years, Carolina Across 100 (CX100), an effort coordinated by the ncIMPACT Initiative at the UNC School of Government, has partnered with counties across the state on five programs to improve the quality of life of North Carolinians.
Program One, “Our State, Our Work” connected Opportunity youth to living-wage employment and educational opportunities. Program Two, “Our State, Our Wellbeing” addressed mental health and suicide prevention. Across both programs, a common theme emerged: the specific need to support the mental health of youth, who increasingly experience anxiety and depression at an alarming frequency.
In response to this need, and with support from Blue Cross NC, CX100 is launching a new initiative: Community-Driven Approaches for Resilient and Empowered Youth (CARE4Youth). This program will work with previously engaged CX100 community teams to build sustainable, collaborative systems of care that support and target youth mental health, particularly in areas with few, if any, care providers.
Addressing the Youth Mental Health Crisis
The call for better mental health support for youth is not new, nor is it surprising. Research shows that most anxiety disorders develop in childhood or adolescence and approximately 20% of youth will experience clinical depression by the age of 18. In North Carolina, the need is particularly urgent:
- 34% of high school students report experiencing chronic mental health difficulties,
- 43% report symptoms of depression, and
- 10% attempted suicide in the last year.
Only about half of youth with mental health difficulties receive treatment, in part due to the lack of treatment options. Even fewer receive treatments that are evidence-based (i.e., supported by research). Alarmingly, 57% of NC counties do not have a single psychiatrist who treats children and adolescents. These gaps highlight the urgent need for accessible, evidence-based mental health interventions for North Carolina youth.
Leveraging Carolina’s Youth Mental Health Expertise
To help meet this need, the Child and Adolescent Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program (CHAAMP), within UNC’s Department of Psychiatry, is partnering with CX100 to launch CARE4Youth to provide clinical expertise and guidance to support the development of evidence-based community programming to improve youth mental health.
CHAAMP is a cutting-edge clinical research program dedicated to improving the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders in youth, from early childhood through adolescence. CHAAMP faculty, most of whom are licensed clinical child and adolescent psychologists, study a range of important topics related to youth mental health including depression, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, psychosis, and early life adversity. Their strong expertise in youth mental health risk makes CHAAMP the ideal partner to help CARE4Youth teams expand and improve youth mental health care within their home communities. Dr. Danielle Roubinov (Director of CHAAMP) and Dr. Cope Feurer (core CHAAMP faculty) will provide leadership from CHAAMP in partnership with Michael Welker and Abigail Holdsclaw, CX100 team leads.
Creating Local Support Systems for North Carolina’s Youth
With support from CHAAMP, CARE4Youth will partner with prior CX100 teams to build supportive, lasting systems of care for youth mental health that are tailored to the unique needs of their communities. Over three years of personalized programming, CARE4Youth will help participating community teams expand access to youth mental health resources by:
- Facilitating collaboration among community-based teams to share knowledge and strategies,
- Providing evidence-based trainings and expert-led workshops on youth mental health topics, and
- Supporting the development of Youth Advisory Boards to engage youth stakeholders and gain insights into community-specific mental health needs and barriers to accessing effective treatments.
The goal of CARE4Youth is to do more than merely extend access to evidence-based care. The effort will do so in ways that are sustainable and community-informed. The partnership among CHAAMP, youth, and prior CX100 teams will lay the groundwork for long-term, locally supported mental health care support systems that identify, support, and treat vulnerable youth.
Together, we will strive to improve the mental health and overall wellbeing of youth across North Carolina.