Oregon first to adopt metric that aims to make social-emotional health care for young children more accessible
By Eric Tegethoff, Oregon News Service
SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Oregon aims to make social and emotional health care for young children more available with a new metric.
The Oregon Health Authority has adopted the Child-Level Social Emotional Health Metric, which will improve and incentivize care for kids from birth to age 5 who are on the state's Medicaid program. Oregon is the first state in the country to adopt such a measure.
Andi Walsh, senior health policy adviser for the Children's Institute in Oregon, said social-emotional health is the foundation for everyone's mental health.
"Building the ability to develop relationships, to experience and express emotions, to explore," Walsh outlined. "All of those are components of social-emotional health and all of those are the building blocks for positive mental and physical health later in childhood and adulthood."
Walsh pointed out the country's youth are experiencing a mental health crisis and Oregon is falling behind. A recent ranking from Mental Health America on access to care for youth placed Oregon third to last.
Karra Crane served on the parent advisory group for the Oregon Pediatric Improvement Partnership, which developed this metric. She has experience with a child who needs social-emotional health treatments. Crane shared her experience living in a small town, Roseburg, where waitlists for services can be years long.
"If you've never experienced it, you can't imagine what it's like," Crane asserted. "Talking to people that are living it currently is a really good way to help make sure that you're not missing anything that you wouldn't know to look for because you aren't in that fight, essentially."
Walsh stressed the new metric will be especially impactful as the state bans suspension and expulsion from early care and education programs, starting in July 2026. She added that the goal of the metric is to get involved sooner with kids at risk of developing social-emotional challenges, which are often seen in child care settings and preschool.
"This metric is really meant to try and reach those kids much sooner, in a preventative way," Walsh explained. "To start providing them with the services that we know will strengthen those skills and hopefully, theoretically, will prevent those kinds of issues moving forward."
