As a nation, we have reached a crucial moment where youth mental health continuums of care must be broadened to include early detection and prevention, as well as bolster treatment options across systems. In Miami, this is ever more important as state-level politics/policies intersect with a large array of diversity, including nuances that stem from extremely low access to mental health care (49th out of 50 nation-wide by state), being a minority-majority city, an expansive metropolitan identity, and other state-level circumstances like Medicaid non-expansion.

Table of Contents Add a header to begin generating the table of contents Introduction Last year (2022), the US Surgeon General and American Academy of Pediatrics highlighted dramatic increases in youth mental health episodes because of a lack of social interaction, grief, and loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and fragmented healthcare services (find the

TABLE OF CONTENTS Add a header to begin generating the table of contents Introduction Last year (2022), the US Surgeon General and American Academy of Pediatrics highlighted dramatic increases in youth mental health episodes because of a lack of social interaction, grief, and loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and fragmented healthcare services (find the