Addressing Mental Health and Health Inequities

Keya Williams, has spent her career working with kids in underserved neighborhoods. Her work and her own experiences as a parent led her to enroll in the COE’s Counseling Psychology program—first as a master’s student and now in the doctoral program. “I had been a therapist in a school with kids who had fairly severe emotional support issues, and they were in special placements,” Williams explains.

Black and Latinx people make up 30% of the U.S. population, but account for just 6% of all participants in federally funded clinical trials (Konkel, 2015). Studies have also found that common interventions that are considered “the gold standard” in research tend to be less successful in marginalized communities than in White communities (Peek, 2023). Olivia Wojtowicz found herself wondering why.

STORY BY Editorial Services

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Christa Neu

The three-time first team All-Patriot League honoree is No. 1 all-time in assists at Lehigh and fifth on the university’s all-time point list.

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or other behavioral disorders are also likely to suffer academically and psychologically during distance learning, explains Lehigh University’s George DuPaul, PhD, who has focused his research on this student population.

The Council for Equity and Community; Development and Alumni Relations; the Office of Diversity, Inclusion & Equity; Library and Technology Services; the Office of Multicultural Affairs; Student Affairs, and the Office of Student Engagement offered a forum on July 20, 2020 “Are We In This Together? A forum on transforming Lehigh into an antiracist institution.” 

Lehigh University’s Counseling Psychology Program partnered with the Bethlehem Area School District (BASD) in 2012 to create the Community Voices Clinic (CVC). CVC is a school-based mental health clinic where doctoral students coordinate training and supervise master’s students to provide therapy services to students in the schools and the Lehigh Valley community members.

The Gender, Race, Inclusion and Trauma Lab is working with local Lehigh Valley community partners Resilient Lehigh Valley, Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21, Colonial Intermediate Unit 20, Shanthi Project, and Wildlands Conservancy to provide trauma-informed, mindfulness, and social emotional learning (SEL) resources to K-12 educators, students, parents and caregivers.

The partners have created a collaborative resource page that offers weekly lesson plans, self-care strategies, and curated articles to support education, learning, and mental health amongst the COVID-19 pandemic.