Oct. 12 – Few counties have a mental health app like the one Rogers County announced it was designing in September.
County spokesperson Diana Dickinson said Rogers County is following the lead of Erie County, New York. The province launched a mental health app called Erie Path in October 2023. About 950,000 people live in Western New York, which includes Buffalo, the state’s second-largest city.
A mental health app is one of several projects Rogers County and the city of Claremore are funding through a $289,000 grant from the attorney general’s office.
The app Rogers County is developing would gather a range of local resources in one place. Dickinson said people could use the app at any time of day to directly reach a mental health provider.
Dickinson said District 3 Commissioner Ron Burrows heard about Erie Path at a National Association of Counties summit in 2023. When Burrows brought the idea back to Rogers County, there was no money yet to make it a reality.
“When it became clear that the province would be allocated the $289,000, I went there [District 1] Commissioner [Dan] DeLozier and asked him what his thoughts were, and he said, ‘Let’s do it… This would have a big impact on the county,'” Dickinson said.
Amy Rockwood, director of planning and evaluation for the Erie County Department of Mental Health, led the development of Erie Path. Rockwood said 175,638 people have visited the app since launch and people have interacted with the app’s features more than 15 million times.
“I’m over the moon about all of this,” Rockwood said. “From my perspective, the response to this has been shocking, astonishing, shock and awe, holy cow.”
DeLozier said the county hopes to release the app within six months. Dickinson said she is looking for a contractor to design it.
‘We’re going to look into it [Erie County] in terms of collaboration, maybe guidance,” Dickinson said. “They are very open to providing any resources and information we need to guide us through this process.”
Erie Path is available on iPhone and Android, as well as on desktop at eriepath.erie.gov. Rockwood said the idea came from County Executive Mark C. Polancarz after seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic was exacerbating mental health issues, especially for children.
As soon as people log into the app, they see a question: “What would you like to do today?” They have two options: “I am currently experiencing a mental health crisis” or “I would like help finding resources.”
The first option links to crisis contacts, while the second leads to a database with more than 1,200 sources. Both options ask further questions to guide users to a resource that suits their situation.
The province not only designed the app; it contracted with a Buffalo data analytics company, CCNY. David Monroe, director of analytics, says the app asks questions instead of providing a search bar because people may not know exactly what they need.
“For example, ‘Are you or the person you are working with anxious? Click here,'” Monroe said. “That’s a lot easier than looking for dialectical behavior therapy. Not many people know what that is, but they could connect to dialectical behavior therapy, DBT, by asking questions.”
CCNY gathered focus groups to test the questions. The company posted flyers, spread the word on social media and asked community leaders to encourage people to visit partner agencies that would appear as resources in the app.
Monroe said the turnout was good and the business attracted a diverse group of people. Visitors were shown prototypes of the app. They also provided feedback on whether the questions made sense to them and helped them find what they were looking for.
“[Having focus groups] was very important about how [the questions] are designed,” Monroe said. “If you look at Erie Path and the questions being asked, those are the same questions – and the organization of those questions is the same – as when we asked the focus groups.”
Monroe said CCNY also found through the focus groups that a built-in Google Translate feature was enough to guide non-English speakers through the app.
Rockwood said that before the app was launched, Department of Mental Health staff gave it a test drive. She also presented demos to the local disability council and schools.
Then the county and CCNY passed the feedback on to a company called B3IT, which created the app. Erie Path launched on October 4, 2023.
“Over time it has really evolved and distorted because you can’t tell what you’re looking at until you actually look at it,” Rockwood said.
She said the county created a colorblind mode, added new resources and fixed bugs.
Rockwood is also working to make Erie Path a native app instead of a hybrid app. Native apps are built specifically for one operating system: iPhone or Android, not both. She said it’s easier to implement accessibility features, such as screen readers, into a native app.
“The vision of Erie Path has always been to make it accessible to everyone in the community,” Rockwood said.
Rockwood said developing the Rogers County app will likely take longer than expected. But she said the feedback she received was only positive.
“It’s a tremendous amount of work, but this is, I think, the most impactful thing I’ve done in my entire career — and I’ve had a long career,” Rockwood said.
