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The BVSD Board of Education and the Renée Crown Wellness Institute are partnering to analyze how students are using wellness centers. 

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The Renée Crown Wellness Institute's Alma program and it's peer-to-peer approach helps women experiencing depression and anxiety during or after pregnancy feel understood and supported. 

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The Crown Institute’s  is stepping up to address the mental health needs of Latina mothers. This culturally responsive, peer-led initiative is designed to meet the unique challenges faced by new and expectant mothers—especially those in underserved communities.

As we celebrate , it’s important to recognize the efforts of programs like Alma, which are actively addressing mental health disparities in Latinx communities. In the U.S., untreated perinatal depression and anxiety disproportionately affect women from racial and ethnic minorities, with Latinas being particularly vulnerable. Research shows that up to 52% of Latinas experience perinatal depression. 

In Colorado, of mothers reported heightened mental health distress within the first four months postpartum. Left untreated, these conditions not only impact mothers' well-being but also negatively affect their children's development and mother-infant bonding. 

Bridging the Gap in Perinatal Mental Health for Latinas 

Alma is a research-based, peer-to-peer mentoring program designed to support new and expectant parents experiencing depression, anxiety, and stress. Rooted in care, maternal wisdom, and science, it leverages community strengths and offers an innovative solution to the shortage of mental health professionals. 

“Alma helped me understand my mother—why she was sad. Now I can use that understanding to help other mothers. Alma also taught me how to grieve and heal from my own losses. I want Alma to be available to all mothers, to all women,” shares Maria Isabel Almeida, Alma Spanish-Speaking Peer Mentor.

Since its inception, it has supported more than 400 mothers, in both English and Spanish-speaking communities. 

Gracia Deras, an Alma Spanish-Speaking Peer Mentor and Trainer, recalls an encounter that highlights the profound impact of Alma’s approach. She met a mother from Guatemala who didn’t speak Spanish, but rather a Guatemalan dialect. Despite the language barrier, Gracia adapted, using simple words to communicate with the mother, who she later found out was trapped in an abusive relationship. 

By the end of their meetings, the mother found the strength to leave the abusive situation and began working toward providing a better future for her three children. This story is a testament to the power of connection, even in the face of significant challenges. 

Expanding Reach through the Train-the-Trainer Model 

Today, the goal is to expand Alma's reach through the train-the-trainer model, empowering community organizations to deliver maternal mental health support independently. 

"Through this model, the Crown Institute aims to build capacity in both rural and urban communities across Colorado, empowering local organizations to independently expand and sustain the Alma program. Our goal is to reduce the alarming rates of perinatal depression and anxiety, offering hope to the mothers who need it most," says Anahi Collado, PhD, Assistant Research Professor at the Crown Institute and Principal Investigator for the Alma program.  

The partnerships with organizations like in Denver, serving Pitkin, Garfield, and Eagle counties highlight a shared commitment to health equity. These organizations, with their strong connections to the Latinx community, are vital collaborators in ensuring maternal mental health services are both accessible and culturally appropriate. 

The train-the-trainer model will exponentially expand Alma’s reach. By equipping peer mentors, community health workers, and promotoras with the skills and resources to support their communities, we are building a sustainable infrastructure for maternal mental health.  

This approach has already gained momentum, with organizations like Lifespan Local in Denver—trained by the Crown Institute in 2020—requesting further support to continue serving their communities effectively. Additionally, the program has expanded through partnerships in the State of New Jersey and with Postpartum Support International. 

“Our communities are vulnerable, often unheard, but they are incredibly strong. If you give them the tools, they can accomplish so much for their neighborhoods, their communities, and their country,” says Solangel Ramos, Lifespan Local Project Director - Alma  

Tackling Mental Health Disparities 

Mental health disparities, particularly for monolingual Spanish-speaking Latinas, remain a critical issue. Alma’s holistic, culturally responsive approach not only addresses these disparities but also fosters long-term systemic change. By integrating peer mentorship, community engagement, and evidence-based mental health practices, we are making meaningful strides toward health equity. 

“The experience of us as mothers, realizing that we are not alone, that there are other mothers going through the same thing, who suffered ailments, felt alone, felt that fear, and made mistakes. That is what makes the difference between a supportive peer and a mental health professional,” mentions Almeida.

One of Alma's strengths is its ability to connect mothers with the appropriate mental health professionals when cases are more complex. This ensures that those facing more serious challenges receive the specialized care and support they need, while still benefiting from the community-based, culturally responsive framework that Alma provides. 

With the support of its partners, the Alma program is creating a growing network of Latinx leaders, driving the push for maternal mental health advocacy and setting the stage for healthier families, stronger communities, and a brighter future.

Additional reporting and interviews by Julianne Chandler, North American Congress on Latin America Editor.

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The Renée Crown Wellness Institute partners with �鶹ӰԺ Valley School District to evaluate the effectiveness of school wellness centers and how to better support for students' mental health needs.

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Liquid, together with the Renée Crown Wellness Institute, have been recognized at the  for their innovative approach to social and emotional education for young children showcased in the interactive learning app, .

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Since 2019, the Renée Crown Wellness Institute has been combining science and community to explore how women who have experienced perinatal mood and anxiety disorders—with an emphasis on depression—can be resources to others navigating similar challenges.

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The Renée Crown Wellness Institute’s Undergraduate Research Fellows (URFs) embarked on an ambitious research project to explore factors that foster a sense of belonging among students in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience (P&N) at the �鶹ӰԺ.  

This research aimed to identify predictors and contributors to belonging on campus, focusing specifically on peer support, mentorship, self-efficacy, loneliness, cultural celebration, and minority status. 

Although the number of participants from the P&N department was small, results from the study revealed that these students experience a lower sense of belonging compared to their peers in other departments. The analysis highlighted that peer support, loneliness, and self-efficacy are significantly related to a sense of belonging on campus, both within specific departments and in general. Notably, general self-efficacy emerged as the only statistically significant predictor of belonging to the department. 

“Activities to enhance students’ belief in their ability to handle new challenges in their daily lives may also help increase their sense of belonging to their department, possibly because greater self-efficacy removes barriers to participation in extracurricular activities like clubs and research, which may be especially important for first-year students adjusting to college,” says Ian McGillicuddy, a senior at CU �鶹ӰԺ. 

On a campus of over 30,000 students, it can be easy to fade into the background, especially in one of the largest majors on campus. 

Addressing Minority Students' Unique Challenges

In collaboration with the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, the fellows designed and administered a survey targeting 138 P&N students. The year-long research design process culminated in a study focusing on how various factors contribute to their sense of belonging. 

This team of researchers—Kylie Sambirsky, Ian McGillicuddy, Sienna Russell, Kit Ganzle, Mandira Gowda, and Yohana Markos— emphasized the importance of inclusive research design. To ensure that their study was both relevant and comprehensive, the fellows actively integrated the voices and perspectives of the student population into the research process. 

They paid particular attention to the unique challenges faced by minority students, recognizing that identity and representation (or lack thereof) can significantly impact a student’s sense of belonging. 

“Oftentimes, research does not account for the existing stressors associated with different social identities and their significant impact on mental health and academics. All of these variables play a role in feeling a sense of belonging on a college campus, which is something we really wanted to highlight and further promote in the realm of research,” states Kit Ganzle, a senior at CU �鶹ӰԺ. 

By focusing on these nuanced experiences, the research aims to address a crucial gap in the existing literature and provide a more inclusive perspective that highlights the voices and experiences of those often overlooked. 

Concluding their study, the group brainstormed ways to further improve the sense of belonging on campus. They identified the need for more research focusing on qualitative data to capture the complexity of student experiences. The lack of qualitative data was a limitation of the current study, which is crucial for understanding the diverse and layered experiences of belonging among students. The URFs believe that students hold the key to improving this crucial aspect of the university experience. 

Dedication to an Inclusive Campus Culture 

“As much as one may believe that you go to college to learn, your experience is ultimately shaped by the community and the connection, or lack thereof, that you feel to the people and the campus. When students feel that belonging, you see a metamorphosis of their character as they grow into the person they are meant to be,” states Kylie Sambirsky, a senior at CU �鶹ӰԺ. 

The URFs are driven by more than academic curiosity; they are committed to creating a more inclusive and supportive academic environment. They understand that belonging is not a one-size-fits-all concept but a complex and layered experience. By capturing this complexity, they hope to inform and inspire initiatives that make every student feel valued and supported.  

The Crown Institute’s mission is to create a world where every young person thrives, independent of their social identity. Central to this mission is the co-design process, which ensures that programs directly involve the people they are intended to benefit. The URFs' inaugural cohort exemplifies this approach, offering a safe and collaborative space for the next generation of student researchers. 

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Recent Crown Institute research on the Trust and Belonging study (Alvarez et al., ; Teeters et al., , ) has identified key elements that enhance engagement, interconnectedness, agency, and justice in educational settings. These elements are crucial for supporting students' diverse experiences and identities, which in turn helps build a more inclusive and dynamic learning environment.  

In this article, we share five practical suggestions for educators to implement in their classrooms. These strategies are designed to nurture trust, foster a sense of belonging, and empower students by acknowledging and integrating their unique identities and experiences.

1. Use multiple modalities, especially the arts, to engage identity, imagination, and agency

Multi-modal approaches support imagination and creativity and allow for students from diverse linguistic and literary backgrounds to express themselves in varying formats. Activities could include writing and illustrating a children’s book, photography, testimonio, drawing, music, poetry, movement or dance, and digital or interactive art forms.

2. Create spaces of trust and belonging

Learning happens most easily when the environment is one of trust and belonging. It is critical to attend to the emotional learning environment and to create a safe space for students and teachers to relate to one another. Trust and belonging can be cultivated by intentionally creating opportunities to foster relationships among peers and between educators and students. One way to do this is to set up a way for students to share what’s on their mind, like a daily check-in that is unrelated to academic content. When students feel “seen” by their teachers, they report a greater sense of belonging. Belonging can also be cultivated by inviting students’ stories into the classroom.

3. Examine history and power within the educational context

While supporting students to tell their stories and explore their identities can be a powerful vehicle toward educational justice, it is important to consider historical and asymmetrical power relations transparently and carefully (i.e., who has the power to influence society and culture, to make the rules, and whose voices are missing) in order to ground pedagogical approaches toward students’ experiences and their daily realities.

4. Invite students’ full experiences into the learning environment, including challenging experiences

Recent scholarship has brought attention to the need for educators and schools to understand students’ experiences that present challenges (Esteban-Guitart, 2021; Poole, 2020). Inviting students to share honestly about challenging experiences, particularly ones that are socially and politically constructed, can allow students to hear their experiences within the stories and experiences of their peers. Sociopolitical challenges are often deeply internalized by students; by sharing them and seeing common connections, students may be able to recontextualize these challenges within broader systems of inequity (Teeters et al., 2022).

5. Link the curriculum to student identity

It is important for students to see themselves reflected within the curriculum. This involves including historical figures and authors that reflect students’ backgrounds and exploring ways to include diverse knowledge systems within the classroom pedagogy. It also involves including students’ own stories in the curriculum with activities such as book making, photo testimonio, digital storytelling, and video creation. 

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We spoke with Dr. Chelsea Kilimnik, Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Crown Institute, to discuss the development, successes, and future aspirations of the "Also Our Campus" project. This community-engaged research program focuses on amplifying the voices and lived experiences of individuals with minoritized identities on the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus.

The "Also Our Campus" team has been conducting focus groups and surveys with undergraduate students from diverse identities to understand their experiences as new students in the college environment. The research examines their sense of belonging among peers, friends, and within the university, and how this sense of belonging relates to experiences of safety and harm on campus.

What are your hopes for this program?  

In partnership with a student advisory board, we’ll engage in a lot of community mobilization conversations around the results of our different studies. Our community partners will work with us to review results and identify targets for system wide and community-based prevention programming. From that, we’d like to build a web-based intervention program that allows for a virtual space for fostering belonging amongst folks from different identities on campus and provide access to resources like education modules, community building opportunities, and connection to campus and community resources.   

Did anything surprise you with the focus groups?   

I knew the people who did engage with the study would be passionate because if you’re doing something centered on social justice, equity, or violence, the people who want to share their stories or engage are the people who want to make a difference. We get to hear authentic voices and stories opposed to feeling like students are just answering questions or doing what they need to do to get their compensation. They are fully engaged and passionate and want to see change and that has been inspiring; more inspiring than I thought it would be. 

Could you elaborate on the Interdisciplinary Approach?  

A lot of the systems of education that are going on in a project like this historically are oppressive. In psychology, as a field, we don’t have a great track record of working with folks from minoritized identities, despite the field now trying to do a lot to combat that.  Being able to bring in disciplines in an ongoing way has honored different ways of knowing, learning, and sharing information because it doesn’t feel as top-down in how we are doing the work. It allows for a lot more flexibility. We are trying to find ways to approach this differently, such as with my collaborator Professor Donna Mejia bringing a more arts-based lens to our work or involving the voices of students from disciplines like public health, social justice, education, and policy-oriented work. We also pull a lot of theories from different disciplines like intersectionality theory and critical race theory which has allowed the work to be richer.  

Is there anything you’d like people to know about this program?  

Our research program in and of itself seems to be having an intervention effect on offering something to students. For instance, with the focus groups, we get these students coming in and engaging in rich meaning making conversations about experiences – some are positive, and some are heavy, and we process and debrief these experiences. Once students leave, they now have this group of people they’ve connected with about these experiences that are tied to who they are and the campus they are situated in. A lot of them are exchanging numbers and walking back to campus together and they’re building a community within the focus groups.  A lot of the feedback we’ve gotten is appreciation for a space to connect in a meaningful way. They get to have these conversations there isn’t a lot of room for normally. That has been a wonderful, happy accident of the project. 

If you are interested in getting involved as a participant, check out our  

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