Military Child & Family Collaboration Study
Accessing and navigating services for children with mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral health concerns has greater complexity for military families, geographically-dispersed families and families who are highly mobile or lack providers near their homes.
The University of Minnesota’s Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain (MIDB) is working to lower these barriers as a partner in the Military Child & Family Collaboration Study. By broadening the capacity of mental health workers and increasing telehealth options, MIDB’s goal is to make high-quality mental, emotional, developmental, and behavioral health care easier to navigate for military families—wherever they are located.
“Telehealth and related remote technology allows us to go beyond the traditional 'brick and mortar' boundaries for reaching children and families, opening new doors for inclusion. In our Military Child & Family Collaboration Study we deploy a wide variety of digital tools to improve both access to and quality of care through research and provider capacity building.”
Jessica Simacek, PhD
Study principal investigator, director of the TeleOutreach Center and co-director of the TeleOutreach Research Service Hub
Our Aims
Aim 1: Improve provider capacity to improve access to pediatric mental, emotional, developmental and behavioral health care
Improving access starts with improving the ability of providers to support children with mental, emotional, developmental and behavioral health needs where they live. Our team uses multiple telehealth-enhanced tools and programs to increase access for rural and military connected children and families across the Upper Midwest, including: a) Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), a specialist virtual "hub and spoke" network to support community providers, b) satellite site methodology to improve access to technology and education in telehealth use, and c) asynchronous remote trainings to advance provider knowledge and confidence in treating mental, emotional, developmental and behavioral health needs.
Aim 2: Develop and deploy telehealth models and digital tools to accelerate care
Military connected children face unique care needs. When located in the Upper Midwest, they may be in rural locations with distance to speciality providers or they may need to re-establish care when relocating. Our team is providing the latest research on the development and use of telehealth and digital tools to overcome these barriers and to improve care timing, access, and quality for children and families.
Aim 3: Ground telehealth and care access in evidence for just-in-time decision making
Tracking access to pediatric mental, emotional, developmental and behavioral health care poses challenges through isolated systems and the use of historical data to make present day decisions. Rural and mobile populations are less represented in research and are thus not often represented in driving and benefitting from evidence based care. Our team is developing data dashboards that track service utilization, capacity and telehealth utilization across different populations (e.g., rural) and transform complex data into an up-to-date, user-friendly actionable interface. These insights allow for the precise targeting of evidence based practices, ensuring high quality services are efficiently directed to rural, highly mobile and military-connected families.
Open Studies
MIDB invites families and providers to participate in specific study opportunities that help us test and improve telehealth tools for the communities we serve. Your partnership allows us to expand care and broaden support for dispersed and mobile families.
Bridging Barriers Autism First Project - Family Participants
This study looks at the effectiveness of early intervention services provided over video conferencing (also referred to as telehealth) for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their families.
Bridging Barriers Autism First Project - Community Provider Participants
This study involves trained community-based providers delivering live parent coaching sessions through synchronous telehealth.
Trainings
Provider Training to Support Families of Children With Behavioral and Mental Health Needs
These virtual, asynchronous modules provide the most current, evidence-based information and practical tools necessary to better support children with M/E/D/B health needs and their families.
Project ECHO®: Telehealth to Support Families of Children with Behavioral Health and Mental Health Needs Longitudinal Series
Hear from and share with U of M Hub Team members in Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Social Work, Early Childhood Intervention and Special Education. This series will allow for deeper dives into specialty topic sprints that span multiple sessions, as well as standalone didactics. This series is open to all, but is likely most relevant to primary care, pediatric, behavioral health, mental health, and educational providers. Social work CEUs will be available for this series.
Stay tuned for more information, new a Project ECHO series is starting soon!
Events
Visit us at a county fair!
Pine County Fair
11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
July 31, 2026
707 1st Ave NW, Pine City, MN 55063
North St. Louis County Fair
12:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Aug. 7, 2026
316 W Lake St, Chisholm, MN 55719
Stevens County Fair
4:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Aug. 13, 2026
177 County Road 22, Morris, MN 56267
Visit us at the Minnesota State Fair!
D2D Building
9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Aug. 28, 2026
1367 Cosgrove Street, Falcon Heights, MN 55108
D2D Building
9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Sept. 1, 2026
1367 Cosgrove Street, Falcon Heights, MN 55108
D2D Building
9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Sept. 3, 2026
1367 Cosgrove Street, Falcon Heights, MN 55108
Contact Us
Reach out to [email protected] for more information on the Military Child & Family Collaboration Study.
This research was supported by a cooperative agreement with the Henry Jackson Foundation and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the views expressed are those of the presenters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.