USA - Lived Experience Takes Center Stage in AcademyHealth's School Mental Health Research

USA - Lived Experience Takes Center Stage in AcademyHealth's School Mental Health Research AcademyHealth's Thriving in School project culminates with a powerful research agenda prioritizing lived experience of children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN)—nearly 1 in 5 U.S. kids facing fragmented school-based mental health services. ​ The new resources—an environmental scan, plain language summaries, research roadmap, and youth/family framing tool—shift from pathology-focused models to patient-centered outcomes. Families' real-world insights expose care coordination gaps and inconsistent definitions across health/education silos, demanding cross-system collaboration on multi-tiered supports, wraparound models, and peer involvement. This participatory agenda bridges schools, providers, and communities, posing critical questions like: What school-based combinations best serve CYSHCN's diverse needs? How to measure comprehensive teams' impact? By centering lived expertise, it fills literature gaps and scales proven strategies. At Together in.sanity - Experience Hub, this validates our push for experience work in mental health policy. Families aren't bystanders—they're co-creators of effective systems. Researchers: Pursue these priorities to transform youth well-being. How are you integrating lived experience into mental health research? Let's connect!