Rural Mental Health & Wellbeing Focus Group Series

Are you a NYSARH member representing a Rural Health Network or other rural community-based organization in New York State? If so, we invite you to join us in a series of virtual focus groups on mental health and wellbeing in New York's rural communities.

In September 2025, NYSARH published a new report, the Statewide Aggregate Rural Health Needs Assessment: Mental Health and Wellbeing (SARHNA), the first statewide synthesis of local planning documents to create a comprehensive picture of rural behavioral health needs across all 44 rural counties of New York.

Now, we'd like to hear from you, our members, about your experiences and priorities related to mental health and wellbeing in the rural communities where you live or serve. Many factors influence rural mental health and wellbeing--together, these focus groups will help us identify a priority area to focus our collaborative efforts in 2026.

In each session, we'll:

• Review the major themes found in the SARHNA
• Reflect on which themes most resonate as priority areas
• Share ideas on potential opportunities to make progress on improving mental health and wellbeing in rural communities

Our virtual focus group series will offer two sessions in November and two in December: 

• November:
• • Thursday, 11/13/2025, 12-1:30PM
  • Friday, 11/14/2025, 9-10:30AM
• December:
• • Wednesday, 12/03/2025, 12-1:30PM
  • Thursday, 12/04/2025, 9-10:30AM

We hope you'll join us for one of these sessions and share your thoughts to help inform our future collaborative efforts!

Please note: these focus group sessions will be recorded and transcribed for analysis and reporting purposes. Recordings will only be accessible by members of NYSARH's focus group planning team and will not be made publicly available.