An afternoon of activities and talks on May 6th marked the official launch of Elevate: A Policy Lab to Elevate Mental Health and Disrupt Poverty, which works to transform the public sector’s fight against poverty by elevating family mental health. The new policy lab is housed at Yale School of Medicine with support from the Department of Psychiatry and Yale Child Study Center.
Attendees— whose backgrounds ranged from public service to clinical care, academic research, and philanthropy— joined the Elevate team to learn about the lab’s first projects underway and to dream up projects and initiatives for future years. Guests first gathered at Stop & Shop for an under-the-hood look at the New Haven MOMS Partnership℠ hub site, then filled Yale's Greenberg Conference Center to maximum capacity for an afternoon of activities and talks on groundbreaking research and innovative solutions to advance the social and economic mobility of families by strengthening family mental health.
The event featured TED-style talks from Elevate partners from across the country, from experts in pediatric neuroscience to pioneering mental health advocates. Staff of the flagship New Haven MOMS Partnership® offered mock sessions of MOMS interventions, while partners from Washington, DC, Vermont, and Kentucky provided insights into the experience of scaling the MOMS Partnership® — one of Elevate's primary activities.
Friends and colleagues compiled wish lists for Elevate's activities and initiatives in the coming years and derived inspiration from a fireside chat with Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, who shared insights from her work to promote children’s early brain and language development and her own experiences as a mother, and announced a new partnership between MOMS and Too Small to Fail, an early childhood education initiative of the Clinton Foundation, to integrate services promoting maternal mental health and children’s early literacy development. The event wrapped with a reception and concluding talk by Robin Hood Foundation CEO Wes Moore, whose remarks underscored the necessity of the cross-sector fight against poverty and closed out the event with a focus on the work ahead.
See more photos from the launch event here.