system

transformation

The Lone Star Depression Challenge Awarded the
Lone Star Prize

Today in Texas, depression and other mental illnesses go undetected, and untreated, for an average of 8–10 years after symptoms emerge. This means fewer than 1 in 15 of the more than 1.5 million Texans suffering from depression each year receive the care they need.

Improving these numbers has been a focus of the Meadows Institute since its inception, and 2021 represented a huge leap forward in that mission as the Institute received the prestigious Lone Star Prize, sponsored by Lyda Hill Philanthropies. The Prize is the result of a statewide competition designed to source a pipeline of philanthropic “big bets” and scale a proven, transformative solution that improves the quality of life for Texans.

The $10 million award is funding the Lone Star Depression Challenge, an innovative program to improve quality of life and mental health care for communities across the state. The Lone Star Depression Challenge is a wide-scale expansion of three proven initiatives:

• The Cloudbreak Initiative embeds early detection and treatment of mental illness in primary care settings and utilizes measurement-based care to track symptoms and functional outcomes throughout treatments.

EMPOWER enables community health workers, peer specialists, and others on the front line to deliver brief psychological treatments and engage people in additional care when it’s needed.

The Path Forward for Mental Health and Substance Use is a national initiative of organizations collaborating to improve access to affordable, high-quality mental health and substance use services and to drive adoption of advanced depression care provided to employees and their dependents.

The Lone Star Depression Challenge deploys these proven approaches to overcome the systemic barriers preventing most Texans with depression today from accessing care sooner and more effectively. The Challenge was created in collaboration with the Center for Depression Research and Clinical Care at UT Southwestern, Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, and The Path Forward.

More than 172 proposals were submitted, with applications evaluated on whether they were transformative, scalable, feasible, and evidence-based.

Through this award, Texans across the state will be diagnosed and treated more quickly, long before symptoms progress to a crisis point.