AscendRural Announces Partnership with Northwestern University
AscendRural Partners with Northwestern University to Advance Research on Leveraging Technology to Improve Well-Being in Rural America
AscendRural is proud to announce a new research and evaluation partnership with Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health, a leader in digital health science and implementation. This collaboration will support AscendRural’s growing portfolio of pilots aimed at improving well-being in rural America—from mental health resources for youth to supporting volunteer first responders.
The Lab for Scalable Mental Health will help AscendRural track, measure, and report on the outcomes of its well-being pilots, providing critical insights into what works, what needs improvement, and how to scale successful solutions. These insights will be leveraged to develop new frameworks and tools specifically designed to better meet the needs of rural communities through technology.
Through this partnership, Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health will provide:
Evaluation planning and design
Analysis of participant and community feedback
Insights into implementation challenges and opportunities
Capacity building to sustain scalable, tech-enabled solutions
Scientific dissemination of results to inform rural well-being nationwide
“Working with Northwestern University brings deep scientific expertise and rigorous methods to our work,” said Melissa Kjolsing, Managing Director of AscendRural. “We’re not just testing technologies, we’re building a foundation of data, learning, and community insight that can inform what comes next for rural innovation.”
As part of this partnership, the Lab for Scalable Mental Health will help measure and report on the outcomes of AscendRural’s youth resilience pilots, which launched earlier this year in five rural communities across the country. These pilots were designed to explore how highly scalable, digital tools can support mental health and well-being for young people who live in rural places where services are often limited, and needs are increasingly urgent. Initial findings will be shared at AscendRural’s Regional Symposium in August.
Dr. Jessica Schleider, Associate Professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University and Director for the Lab for Scalable Mental Health, shared, “Rural communities have long been underserved by the latest innovations to improve well-being. We’re excited to work with AscendRural to systematically evaluate how scalable, tech-enabled solutions can bridge those gaps in a meaningful, measurable way.”
AscendRural was created to deliver tangible, sustainable, and positive impact to the health and well-being of rural communities through right fit technology and innovation. This partnership marks a significant step toward grounding its commitments in data, science, and continuous learning.
About AscendRural
AscendRural is a technology innovation and implementation hub dedicated to boosting the well-being of rural America. Initiated by Sourcewell, it embodies their commitment to helping communities thrive. The program brings together local leaders and the innovation community to pilot technology solutions. The goal is to address accessibility, availability, and affordability issues while accounting for what makes rural communities unique.
About the Lab for Scalable Mental Health
The Lab for Scalable Mental Health (schleiderlab.org), housed within Northwestern University and directed by Dr. Jessica Schleider, conducts research at the intersection of digital health, public health, dissemination and implementation science, and clinical psychology. The Lab’s mission is to create, evaluate, and disseminate brief, scalable supports that bridge historically-unfillable gaps in mental healthcare ecosystems, with a focus on harnessing technologies to serve youth facing structural barriers to treatment. LSMH has pioneered a new area of intervention science—single-session interventions (SSIs) for mental health—that opens tangible paths toward reducing mental health problems at scale. Via multiple federal, foundation, and industry-funded grants, LSMH has led dozens of clinical trials and large-scale evaluations of digital and lay provider-delivered SSIs. Through these initiatives, LSMH’s SSIs have served more than 100,000 young people to date.