By Tom Sebastian and Roxi Cronin / For The Herald
An estimated 1 in 4 Americans live with a behavioral health disorder. Locally, we see the visible impacts of mental health needs every day, and over the past several years, mental health needs have skyrocketed across our community, region and nation.
Conditions such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder often require intensive treatment and are exacerbated by other pressing issues such as housing insecurity. In fact, chronic, long-term homelessness now accounts for more than 50 percent of all people experiencing homelessness in Snohomish County.
We have a key opportunity as a community to invest in systems and infrastructure that will enable us to address these needs, helping individuals achieve recovery and preventing the mental health crises that weigh on our families, workplaces, emergency responders and medical systems.
Standing at this inflection point, it’s time to build solutions that empower a healthier, more sustainable, proactive and sophisticated future for our community.
With your help, Compass Health is turning that future into a reality.
Our organization recently launched It’s Time: The Campaign for Compass Health, a $14 million capital campaign to help fund the second phase of the Broadway Campus Redevelopment: a state-of-the-art facility designed to address some of the most pressing and complex mental health needs across our region.
The campaign has already raised more than $10 million thanks to lead funders including the Sunderland Foundation, the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, The Norcliffe Foundation, Premera Blue Cross, and the Martyn Family Foundation. My family’s charitable giving organization, the Cronin Family Foundation, proudly invested early to help bring this project to life, alongside other companies, individuals and families who recognized the opportunity to make an impact. State leaders have also contributed more than $20 million toward the total $65.7 million cost of this transformational project.
Now, we and our colleagues across the Compass Health community are encouraging residents of Snohomish County and beyond to join us in building the future of behavioral health care by helping to raise the remaining $4 million in capital campaign funding.
The purpose-built facility will serve low-income individuals with intensive mental health needs. Through inpatient, intensive outpatient and crisis services, Compass Health will be better equipped to serve clients who benefit from frequent touchpoints with mental health professionals to support their recovery, housing and engagement in the community; and avoid stays in the hospital and even jail.
To provide a sense of the high-frequency care involved, we anticipate serving 1,500 individuals through more than 30,000 points of care each year at the new facility; including therapy, medication and case management, and other evidence-based outreach.
One of the facility’s most highly anticipated features is a new crisis triage center, which will help alleviate demand for 911 emergency response while also enabling law enforcement to transport individuals in crisis directly to the building for immediate, stabilizing care.
By investing in this project, residents can play a critical role in bringing a much-needed mental health resource to our region; and also help make the Broadway corridor a more vibrant gateway to our city.
Between transportation renovations and updated housing services like HopeWorks Station and Compass Health’s Andy’s Place, community members have patiently watched Broadway transform throughout the past two decades. This ongoing revitalization is creating a passageway that’s inviting to work, live, and navigate to and from.
In this second phase of the campus redevelopment, Compass Health’s new Broadway facility will replace the Bailey Building, a 70-plus-year-old structure that capably served as a home for seniors before it was repurposed to house mental health services. We plan to honor the legacy of the building while we celebrate the ability to utilize a scarce resource — space in an urban corridor — to address the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Just as the new facility will be a modern and attractive addition to Broadway, it will also serve as a magnet for talented health care professionals at a time when workforce shortages continue to exceed crisis levels. With the ability to attract a world-class team of professionals, the facility will help ease the region’s growing demand for care.
As we stand at a crossroads, Compass Health is offering solutions that address urgent needs across our region. We encourage you to invest in this once-in-a-lifetime project. Together, we are paving a path forward and strengthening not only the future of healthcare, but also the Everett community and its people.
By Tom Sebastian is chief executive officer at Compass Health. Roxi Cronin is a member of the Compass Health Board of Directors.
Learn more
To learn more or donate about Compass Health’s capital campaign, go to www.compasshealth.org/itstime/.
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