For far too long, government approaches to reducing poverty have relegated mental health as an afterthought. But the experiences of people in poverty show, and research increasingly corroborates, that mental health matters – a lot. Regardless of how many job training programs are available – or even how many job opportunities exist, if someone is too depressed to even get out of bed for example, then it will be even more difficult for her to move her family ahead.
The good news is that mental health is highly obtainable. And we know, for example from evaluations of the MOMS Partnership®, that strengthening mental health can help families escape poverty.
That’s why Elevate was created.
Publicly launched on May 6, 2019, Elevate is a policy lab at Yale School of Medicine in collaboration with Women's Health Research at Yale to elevate mental health and disrupt poverty. Elevate works with government partners in the U.S. to advance family mental health as a pathway to economic and social mobility, thereby interrupting the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Its bread and butter is scaling the MOMS Partnership® outside of New Haven.