The Mills administration has allocated funds to extend pediatric behavioral health programs run by MaineHealth for an additional year that the state says comes amid high suicide rates and mental health issues among Maine’s youth stemming from the CVOID-19 pandemic.

According to a contract document published Tuesday, the Children’s Behavioral Health Services (CBHS), a division of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (Maine DHHS), will be awarding nearly $400,000 through a non-competitive grant to Maine Medical Center in Westbrook to keep the pediatric behavioral health programs running for another year.

Funding for the grant comes from the federal Pediatric Mental Health Access Program, administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration, a sub-agency of the U.S. DHHS.

Maine DHHS staff wrote in the contract document that the grant will “increase access to behavioral health care by expanding the ability of pediatric primary and specialty care providers to detect, assess, treat and refer children with behavioral health disorders.”

“This amendment adds funding to continue services for another year, allowing the current vendor [MaineHealth] to continue providing peer-to-peer telehealth consultations, be subject matter experts at the ECHO Webinar Series and to provide additional education to clinical providers through technical assistance and Lunch & Learns sessions without disruption while the Department transitions management of the grant and evaluates any necessary program changes prior to competitive procurement,” staff wrote.

Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a telementoring organization hosted at the University of New Mexico that runs a wide array of health care-related webinar series, meant to disseminate best practices to providers globally.

Cited by staff in the contract document is data from America’s Health Rankings from 2022 that ranked Maine among states with the highest suicide rates for youth ages 15-19 at 16.8 per 100,000.

Also cited was the 2021 Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, which found that 31.6 percent of middle schoolers and 42.7 percent of high schoolers in Maine reported their mental health as “not good,” which Maine DHHS staff wrote exemplifies “the profound impact the COVID-19 pandemic has hand on Maine’s youth.”

Maine DHHS as initiated a Request for Proposals (RFP) process for a future competitive procurement of the pediatric mental and behavioral health services for a contract start date in July 2025.