Kansas Models and Innovations

These stories feature model programs and successful rural projects that can serve as a source of ideas. Some of the projects or programs may no longer be active. Read about the criteria and evidence-base for programs included.

Promising Examples

Healthy Early Learning Project (HELP)
Updated/reviewed August 2022

• Need: An ongoing health need to alleviate early childhood obesity in the rural Kansas counties of Marshall and Nemaha.
• Intervention: 5 distinct physical and nutritional programs were introduced to 9 preschool sites through the overarching Healthy Early Learning Project (HELP).
• Results: HELP comprehensively increased children's physical activity and healthy food consumption and established a sustainable presence at each preschool site.

Schools That Care
Updated/reviewed August 2022

• Need: To provide mental health services to rural Kansas students and their families.
• Intervention: The Schools That Care project provides mental health treatment and case management as well as community education events.
• Results: From 2018 to 2021, 3,456 individuals participated in health education and counseling activities offered to the public, and 964 individuals and 303 families received direct services through the Family Advocate.

Other Project Examples

Rural Recruitment Reimagined Workshop Presents the "Safe Sites" Model
Updated/reviewed April 2023

• Need: Strategies to recruit and retain providers to practice in rural settings.
• Intervention: A traveling one-day workshop was designed to share ideas and firsthand accounts on successful strategies on how to create "Safe Sites" for new recruits.
• Results: So far, workshops have trained over 250 hospital administrators, board members, and rural hospital recruiters.

Jana's Campaign: Love Doesn't Hurt
Updated/reviewed February 2023

• Need: Prevention and education programs for schools to reduce gender and relationship violence among teenagers.
• Intervention: Jana's Campaign offers school-based trainings, presentations, projects, and consultations through Love Doesn't Hurt: Teen Gender Violence and Prevention Program.
• Results: So far, 648 middle and high schools and more than 86,280 students in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri, and Oklahoma have benefited from the program.

Kansas Asthma Initiative
Updated/reviewed September 2022

• Need: Many of Kansas's rural residents have low incomes and are medically underserved, putting them at a potential increased risk for uncontrolled asthma.
• Intervention: The Kansas Asthma Initiative was a partnership that provided education and professional development opportunities via telehealth for healthcare providers and caregivers of asthma patients.
• Results: The partnership developed a better methodology for working with physicians. Telehealth technology helped facilitate a positive collaboration among providers in Kansas in order to decrease the burden of asthma.

Sowing the Seeds of Hope
Updated/reviewed November 2020

• Need: Agriculture workers and their families have high rates of psychological distress and suicide, but limited access to mental health services.
• Intervention: The "Sowing the Seeds of Hope" (SSoH) program was created to provide affordable and culturally appropriate mental health services to individuals working in agriculture and their families in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
• Results: The regional program ran from 1999-2014 and successfully established a variety of interventions to help individuals in rural communities access behavioral health services.