By Diana Williams, California Health Care Foundation, December 1, 2020
At the big city charter school she ran, Ashley Edwards was surrounded by future artists, writers, and engineers who radiated talent and grit. Many of her students were driven to succeed despite encountering racism, poverty, and community violence on a routine basis, she said.
“I’d generally describe them as survivors,” Edwards said of the young people at Newark Prep Charter School in New Jersey. In communities nationwide, young people growing up in Black families and in households with low incomes regularly endure frightening or threatening situations – the kind of stresses that inflict lasting damage on a child’s mental and physical health.
To help students facing these conditions in Newark and around the country, Edwards in 2019 founded an app-based service called MindRight Health to provide daily mental health coaching geared to youth of color. A team of culturally compatible coaches is on duty every day of the year, offering advice about managing problems big and small – and delivering them via text message. Students pay nothing. MindRight is hired and paid by community health partners like schools and state Medicaid programs.
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