News Details

Coleman Professional Services Receives Grant
April 4, 2008

KENT, Ohio – Coleman Professional Services was recently awarded a $96,000 grant from the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation of Hudson, Ohio, in an initiative to implement a regional mental health awareness campaign.

Coleman, a regional behavioral health and rehabilitation organization headquartered in Kent, will lead a four county initiative directed at local colleges and universities to educate students on the facts and issues regarding behavioral health and mental illness. The initiative will develop a repeatable awareness model that can be implemented at numerous universities to encourage more students to openly discuss the common issues facing their campus communities relating to mental illness and to understand the resources available to help their friends and family recover.

Coleman will be contracting with the University of Akron’s Institute for Health and Social Policy to coordinate a series of ten focus groups to garner information from college students to measure levels of current attitudes and awareness of mental health issues. The Institute will also complete a program evaluation in the spring of 2008, after implementation, to determine the efficacy of the program.

Meghan Urbon of Coleman Profession Services will serve as the program coordinator to coordinate efforts with the county Mental Health and Recovery Boards in Portage, Stark, Summit and Trumbull Counties and a Curriculum Developer to construct an effective awareness campaign curriculum by utilizing data collected from the focus groups. The curriculum will then be implemented in at least four yet to be determined Ohio colleges and universities.

President of the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation, Mr. Rick Kellar said, “We are grateful to have a collaborative partner like Coleman Professional Services to lead this important project. We look forward to an outcome of real behavioral change over time, rather than transparent ads that have no real or lasting impact.”

This comprehensive campaign initiative resulted from a group of preliminary planning group sessions for four months in 2007 comprised of four Mental Health and Recovery Boards, representatives from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and key members from the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation and Coleman Professional Services who met to discuss possible campaign ideas. Work on the newly funded initiative has begun this month and completion is anticipated in spring or summer of 2009.

Coleman Professional Services is a nationally recognized not-for-profit provider of behavioral health and rehabilitation programs that improve the lives of individuals, families and businesses in Northeast Ohio. The company relies on an enterprise business model to diversify its funding. Coleman’s foundation and three enterprise companies produce more than 40 percent of the company’s funding for its award-winning programs.

The Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation’s mission is to improve mental health practices in Northeast Ohio through effective investment in progressive organizations and innovative initiatives that raises the standards of prevention, treatment and recovery.

For more information on Coleman Professional Services or the services it offers, visit coleman-professional.com or contact Meghan Urbon at (330) 676-6926 or meghan.urbon@coleman-professional.com