NC-STeP-Peds is funded by a $3.2 million investment from the United Health Foundation (UHF), which continues the foundation’s commitment to addressing mental health challenges in North Carolina and working with ECU to provide mental health care services to children and adolescents in rural and underserved areas of the state.
Dr. Sy Saeed, director of the ECU Telepsychiatry Center and founding executive director of NC-STeP, said the program offers an innovative approach to providing mental health services by providing specialized consultation support to pediatricians and other clinicians through telehealth. The model offers integrated care closer to home and introduces several technological innovations.
Each participating clinic will have a space within the clinic where patients can meet virtually with a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) for therapy sessions, and patients who are referred for psychiatric treatment will meet virtually with a psychiatrist in the same space.
“Telepsychiatry is a viable and reasonable option for providing psychiatric care to populations who are currently underserved or lack access to services,” Said said. “NC-STeP is also helping to solve a pressing and difficult challenge in today’s health care delivery system by integrating science-based treatment methods into routine clinical care. We are able to offer telehealth appointments for therapy and psychiatric care with licensed clinical social workers in our pediatric clinics.”
The virtual reality component of the initiative, “NC Rural Kids Get Well,” was created by Dr. Yazhong “Lucky” Xue, Robert D. Tier Distinguished Professor in the Department of Management and Information Systems, and students from the ECU College of Business. It provides a 3D community on the Roblox platform to serve three main purposes: education, peer support and monitoring.
The pediatricians who participated are beginning to see results from this initiative in their own practice.
Dr. Katie Lowry (Class of 2000), a pediatrician at Robson Children’s, watched her hometown of Lumberton suffer two once-in-a-century floods and the COVID-19 pandemic in the space of five years. Dr. Lowry said the emotional impact has led to increased anxiety and depression among her pediatric patients.
“It’s still a long way from getting over the difficulties they’ve been facing,” she says, “and before they had access to NC-STeP and were able to offer it in our office, we would have had about 150 people on the waiting list for counseling.”
Rowley said joining NC-STeP-Peds will help integrate counseling and psychiatric care into their practice, making it easier for children and their families to receive medical care.
“The most important thing is [NC-STeP-Peds] “This hospital has completely broken down the barrier of stigma,” Lawrie says. “Patients are getting care where they’ve always been treated. They don’t have to go to another facility. They don’t have to drive another hour. It’s right here for them. It’s great for patients.”
