As a parent of two teenagers, there is nothing I care about more than their safety and their mental health.
For all parents out there, the decline in teen mental health, shown by rising emergency room visits, deaths by suicide, and overall well-being is just chilling. That’s why I’ve made youth mental health a top priority of my second term as your Attorney General.
Last month, I announced a $20 million initiative to address this crisis, inviting grant applications for school-community partnerships focused on youth mental health. This novel strategy of investing the funds we recovered from holding JUUL accountable and bringing a total of almost $32 million back to Colorado was praised by the Colorado Springs Gazette recently for “seeing our kids through their mental health crisis.” You can read the full article by clicking here.
I announced our plans at the Colorado Education Initiative and outlined our vision for this investment. You can read my remarks here.
This grant opportunity is our effort to lift up and support innovative responses to this crisis. To share best practices and enable schools and communities to learn from other leaders, we are already working–with the Denver Broncos Foundation–on a summer 2025 conference at Empower Field at Mile High.
The opportunity to address the youth mental health crisis–like so much of the work in our department–is incredibly important for our kids. And, as a parent, this project is personal to me, too.
