Mental Health Early Detection Platform

Institute of Education Sciences (IES) funded researchers Drs. Wendy Reinke and Keith Herman developed the Early Identification System (EIS) screening tool to overcome several existing challenges in school-based screening and to assist schools in identifying students experiencing social, emotional, and behavioral problems. They established critical domains to assess with EIS, developed a 37-item pool based on expert input and refinement, and piloted with feedback from school partners. Through an IES Research-Practitioner Partnership grant, Drs. Reinke and Herman established the technical adequacy of the EIS as well as the fidelity and impact of the model. They published multiple peer-reviewed papers about the EIS based on this partnership grant from 2019-2023. The new technology product will ready EIS from a screening tool with limited capability into an enterprise class solution for early detection of mental health needs of K – 12 students and mitigate its shortfalls in scalability and intervention delivery. EIS will be rewritten and integrated into the Metamorphix platform with aggregation of student-level academic, attendance, behavior data from student information system and social determinants and vulnerability data. This will provide school districts the ability to identify and treat mental health risks in student population - sooner with higher fidelity and efficiency.