Behavioral Health Initiative

The Teton Behav­ioral Health Alliance (Alliance), an ini­tia­tive of the Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion of Jack­son Hole, part­nered with the Katz Ams­ter­dam Foun­da­tion on this project, to con­duct a com­mu­ni­ty-wide sur­vey to bet­ter under­stand behav­ioral health needs and gaps in care. The first sur­vey was con­duct­ed in the sum­mer of 2021. A sec­ond iter­a­tion of the sur­vey was com­plet­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2024. Both sur­veys includ­ed two sep­a­rate sur­veys admin­is­tered to the Greater Teton Area’s com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and behav­ioral health providers.

In 2024, the com­mu­ni­ty sur­vey received 1,142 total respons­es and the provider sur­vey received 131. The pur­pose of the sur­veys was to gain under­stand­ing and feed­back on the community’s per­cep­tions of the men­tal health chal­lenges of liv­ing in a rur­al moun­tain com­mu­ni­ty, the sense of belong­ing and per­son­al con­nect­ed­ness, and access to care when need­ed. With mul­ti­ple data sets now avail­able, the Alliance con­tract­ed with Third Hori­zon Strate­gies (THS) to ana­lyze the sur­vey data and pro­duce this report. 

This report aims to iden­ti­fy trends or changes between the two sur­veys, pro­vide a com­mu­ni­ca­tion vehi­cle to the gen­er­al com­mu­ni­ty and key con­stituents, and help inform strate­gic plan­ning efforts in response to iden­ti­fied needs. It pro­vides a sum­ma­ry of the behav­ioral health land­scape in the Unit­ed States, key find­ings from the com­mu­ni­ty and provider sur­veys, and exam­i­na­tion of health dis­par­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly among Latine/S­pan­ish-speak­ing pop­u­la­tions, and rec­om­men­da­tions for com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to con­sid­er as it devel­ops its strate­gic response to the findings.