Our Work
Close friends share a strong bond
While often unstated, they care for and love each other. And this connection offers a pathway to get through to someone in need and to save precious lives — if we can lower the barriers to the conversation about mental health issues and SUD.
Acting on this belief, we developed the Friends for Life (FFL) concept –to encourage friends to subscribe to mental health and substance abuse apps targeted at Gen Z audiences.
We have partnered with Jeeva Health to incorporate the FFL concept into Jeeva, a digital mental health app. The JEEVA-FFL concept provides an easy, low-friction app as an on-ramp with self-care, mood and anxiety tracking along with journaling and tips to improve mental health. The app targets broad adoption and sharing of tips, stories and positive affirmations between friends, thus helping to reach those who are hard to reach.
JEEVA FFL users are encouraged to adopt the fuller JEEVA app which provides an engaging set of interactive tools to access anonymous peer-community discussions, personalized resiliency plans, an anonymous mental health chatbot, self-assessments tools and tips to tackle typical Gen Z issues via workshops – on addiction, social media detox, relationships and other topics - by trained therapists and/or peer-coaches.
Together with JEEVA we will work to integrate information and data with the campus mental health and wellness resources where students have opted into this service.
Draft Image - Replace with final JPG image
Together, these apps will lower multiple barriers - to conversations about these issues, to greater self-awareness to offering help and accepting help, and to intervening when needed.
Together, with JEEVA, we are unlocking true peer support — where peers are close friends who care for each other and use the app together to overcome the forces placing them at risk:
The increased stress in the lives of young adults - 60% of college students have a mental health condition.
The dramatic increase synthetic fentanyl resulting in a 7.5 fold increase in opioid overdose deaths between 2015 – 2021.
The natural inclination of young adults to turn to friends rather than parents, teachers, or counselors when they are struggling
Through our work to date, we have developed relationships with several established organizations who are making great strides to support the Gen Z community in our focus areas. These include the Jed Foundation, Mary Christie Institute and Christie Campus Health. The Friends for Drew Foundation will provide financial support to these, and possibly other organizations, where our mission and programs overlap.
Pilot rollouts of JEEVA FFL and JEEVA are planned for the fall of 2023 with broader distribution targeted in the spring of 2024.
We are working to drive adoption of the JEEVA FFL app through partnerships with larger organizations that provide mental health and substance use support to hundreds of colleges and universities. We are building marketing plans that encourage adoption through organizations on campuses that have a “built-in” sense of connectedness and friendship, such as athletic teams, student clubs, and fraternities and sororities, etc.
.
We need your help
To continue our progress - to add fresh content, to reach young adults on campuses, in high schools and on social media platforms across the country. To Save Lives!