Our Story

The Stronger Together story begins in the East Bay region of Rhode Island in 2019 when Jordyn Hagar, PhD, LICSW, met the directors of the East Bay Regional Coalition (EBRC), an organization addressing substance use prevention and mental health promotion in their region. Dr. Hagar is a social worker with over 20 years of experience in the fields of child and adolescent mental health, program development and evaluation, accessible service delivery, and health and mental health equity. It quickly became clear that Dr. Hagar and the coalition could work together to address the community's desire and the coalition's need for accessible, flexible, and cost-effective mental health awareness programming.

The program development process began with a targeted community needs assessment with leaders in the community who might use the new program, as well as with strategic members of the community who were embedded in the local culture and could understand the community's mental health needs. What quickly emerged was the desire for a short training (approximately 2 hours) that was portable, could be used in a variety of settings, and that could potentially be accessed online as well.

Through generous funding from two rounds of the State Opioid Response (SOR) Community Grant program, Dr. Hagar developed and piloted the original in-person Stronger Together program for adults and worked with Healthcentric Advisors, a healthcare quality improvement consulting organization, to develop and pilot the online program. Pilot data showed approximately 90% of participants demonstrated increased efficacy handling mental health concerns after completing the program, and many of those not experiencing an increase had high levels of efficacy prior to completing the program. 

From that point, the program has been adapted and scaled in multiple contexts, both regionally and beyond. First, Dr. Hagar developed a facilitator training program to prepare new facilitators to run Stronger Together in their communities. Then, Dr. Hagar partnered with the East Providence Prevention Coalition to adapt the program for a youth audience (approximately ages 13-22). She also partnered with the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network Northeast to adapt the program for an audience of agricultural service providers. Dr. Hagar's original partner, EBRC, received five years of funding through SAMHSA's Mental Health Awareness Training (MHAT) Grant to further disseminate and evaluate the program regionally. A presentation at CADCA's mid-year conference in Chicago in 2024 on the program's adaptation and scaling process sparked interest in the program from prevention workers in many states across the US. 

Most recently, Dr. Hagar has piloted and formalized a digitial version of the facilitator training, so new facilitators can now learn to run the program from anywhere and at their own pace. Everything you need to bring the program to your community can be found in the digital facilitator training- accessible from this website. Additionally, the original program has been translated into both Spanish and Portuguese, also accessible from this website.

Thanks to the hard work of all of our partners and their unwavering belief in the value of the program, Stronger Together has strong regional evidence to support its efficacy. Stronger Together is now gathering data nationally in an attempt to move toward evidence-based status. Check out our facilitator testimonials and the open studies to see how you can get involved!