September 17, 2025
Across the country, youth mental health needs are reaching critical levels, with many young people struggling to access the support they need. At the same time, the behavioral health field faces a significant shortage of trained professionals.
The Youth Mental Health Corps (YMHC) seeks to bridge these gaps. Conceived by the Schultz Family Foundation and Pinterest, this collaborative initiative not only supports youth mental health in schools and communities but will provide more than 800 young adults with pathways into careers in behavioral health this year.
WestEd is proud to partner with the organizations that are working to promote and expand the YMHC, which currently operates in four states: Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and Texas. As the initiative’s evaluation partner, WestEd is chronicling its progress, identifying best practices, and documenting its impacts.
In this Q&A, Dr. Tracy A. Huebner, Director of Special Programs and Initiatives at WestEd’s Center for Economic Mobility, provides an inside look at WestEd’s documentation and reporting of implementation experiences and lessons learned related to Year 1 of the YMHC.
The dual focus addresses two interconnected crises simultaneously. Over 8.3 million young people struggle with anxiety or depression, while more than one third of the U.S. population lives in Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. This workforce shortage makes addressing youth mental health even more challenging. The YMHC’s approach recognizes that immediate student support and long-term workforce development are both essential—you can’t solve one without solving the other. As one theme from our research shows, this creates sustainability advantages: Communities investing in YMHC members address immediate needs while building local capacity for ongoing support.
The partnership between the Schultz Family Foundation, Pinterest, and AmeriCorps demonstrates how different sectors bring complementary strengths. The partnership’s effectiveness lies in combining private philanthropy’s agility, corporate innovation, and the public sector’s community infrastructure to create scalable solutions. This cross-sector approach enables flexible implementation—the YMHC provides a framework that states can adapt to local contexts while maintaining core principles.
Three key themes emerged from our case studies. First, near-peer connections serve as the engine for engagement—the 18–24 age range creates uniquely powerful relational bridges that students find both accessible and authentic. Second, adaptability makes a difference—one model works across many contexts, from Colorado’s urban settings to Minnesota’s rural communities to Michigan’s healthcare clinics to Texas’s after-school programs. Third, the dual bottom line delivers both immediate student support and long-term workforce pathways. These themes demonstrate the model’s fundamental strength: relationship-centered support that can be tailored locally while building future professionals.
Young adults are responding positively to these structured career pathways. In our 1st year, 46 percent of YMHC members found certifications instrumental in securing employment, and 20 percent secured jobs before completing service, with 28 percent hired directly by their service sites. Members like Jonah McCauley and Myah Wiersema, who are featured in our case studies, report increased clarity about their career paths. This reinforces the notion that workforce development strategies should emphasize hands-on experience combined with stackable credentials and mentorship. The model itself demonstrates that providing real-world experience alongside education creates more effective pathways than traditional classroom-only approaches and, in this instance, for behavioral health careers.
Our evaluation is ongoing, but early challenges center on matching members appropriately to sites and ensuring adequate training and supervision. States address these through intentional member-site matching based on cultural competence and community connections, as seen in Colorado’s approach with Josiah Sanchez. Comprehensive support systems, including preservice training, ongoing professional development, and site integration, help ensure member success. The flexible, state-led implementation allows for local adaptation while maintaining program fidelity, helping to address context-specific challenges while preserving core model effectiveness.
Our case study approach specifically selected diverse implementation models—urban Denver schools, rural Minnesota districts, integrated healthcare in Michigan, and after-school programming in Texas—to illustrate the YMHC’s adaptability across contexts. By documenting how relationship-centered support manifests differently in each setting while maintaining effectiveness, we demonstrate scalability principles. This methodology allows us to identify which elements are essential versus which can be locally adapted, providing actionable guidance for replication. The approach connects individual stories like Josiah’s to systemic insights about workforce development and student support.
Policymakers should use these findings to understand how near-peer support models can address both immediate student needs and workforce shortages simultaneously. Educators can see practical implementation strategies, from member training approaches to site integration methods. Program administrators can learn about the importance of relationship-centered design, local adaptability, and comprehensive support systems for members. The case studies provide concrete examples of successful implementation across diverse contexts, offering both inspiration and practical guidance for developing similar initiatives. The dual-purpose model offers a template for addressing multiple challenges through single, well-designed interventions.
This work is representative of WestEd’s commitment to building evidence through rigorous documentation of promising practices, strengthening systems by identifying scalable models that work across diverse contexts, and supporting learners through relationship-centered approaches that meet students where they are. By documenting how YMHC creates pathways for both student support and workforce development, we’re demonstrating how well-designed interventions can simultaneously address multiple challenges. The research shows how evidence-based, community-embedded approaches can empower both young people receiving services and young adults providing them, creating stronger, more resilient communities.
The YMHC directly supports WestEd’s Center for Economic Mobility’s mission of creating pathways to economic mobility through workforce development. The Center focuses on bringing together employers, educational institutions, and workforce systems and helping connect people in low-wage jobs to skilled employment. The YMHC does exactly this—in its 1st year, data show that 46 percent of members found their certifications instrumental in securing employment, and 20 percent got jobs before finishing the program. Like other Center work, YMHC creates stronger and more equitable pathways to economic mobility by providing stackable credentials and career connections. Members like Myah Wiersema moved from substitute teaching to multiple behavioral health job offers, demonstrating the kind of economic advancement the Center champions through evidence-based, collaborative approaches.
To read more about our work with the YMHC, visit our resource collection page.
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