Improving Youth Mental Health

Our Commitment

The Cigna Group Foundation is committing $9 million over three years to improve the mental health of youth (ages five to 18) as it relates to post-pandemic stress and distress. This commitment includes support for their parents, caregivers, and youth service professionals like educators and therapists.

Our Why

We all have an important role to play in supporting youth and creating a world where they can thrive. The more we give back, the stronger and healthier the future of our society will be–and our support is needed now more than ever.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, up to one in five children ages three to 17 reported a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder. Even now, we continue to see the critical need for both identification and treatment of mental health conditions, which now includes the impact the pandemic may have had on many youth.¹

Our Partners

The work we want to do in our communities cannot be done alone. Many great nonprofit organizations already have the reach and scale necessary to build healthier communities, so contributing to and collaborating with them will help strengthen our collective impact.

In the first year of this youth mental health grant program, we’ve partnered with organizations focused on investing in solutions that address mental health concerns early.

Examples of impact through funded grant programs include:

• A holistic, trauma-informed after-school program designed to empower teen boys and girls severely impacted by challenging life circumstances
• Building social-emotional learning skills in Latinx and immigrant-origin high-school students and educating parents, caregivers, and educators about specific mental health challenges of the students
• Subsidized therapy for youth, as well as mental health training for local youth-serving organizations and schools

Our Call for Action

We seek to collaborate with and support nonprofits that leverage evidence-informed programs and services to serve local youth experiencing the most need.

We are focused on investing in solutions that address mental health concerns early, and strategically offer programming, intervention, and access to care in schools and related settings in underserved communities. Nonprofit partners must align to at least one of these grant program goals: 

• Increase reach of programming that fosters social-emotional skills and well-being.

• Increase the number of parents, caregivers, and youth service professionals who feel equipped to support.

• Increase pathways to mental health intervention and access to care.