| It is only recently that health providers, policy makers, researchers, and the public have begun to focus on the importance of the mental health needs of children, youth, and young adults. There is a growing understanding that children’s mental health issues must be addressed early to improve behavioral health outcomes for children and decrease or prevent problems later in life for the child, his or her family, and the community as a whole. The Caring for Every Child’s Mental Health Campaign (Campaign) is a social marketing program funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that improves the nation’s behavioral health, with a mission of reducing the impact of substance abuse and mental illness in communities across the country. The Campaign’s goals are to increase awareness of children’s mental health issues and promote the development, expansion, and sustainability of innovative approaches to delivering community mental health services for children, youth, and young adults with mental disorders and their families. The Campaign addresses these goals by providing social marketing training and technical assistance (TA) to federally funded grantees in local communities. The Campaign and the grantees are funded through SAMHSA’s Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program (or Children’s Mental Health Initiative [CMHI]). The purpose of this article is to inform professionals in the field of social marketing about how a program at the national level provides support to local, state, tribal, and territorial grantees to facilitate grassroots systems change using a social marketing approach. The case study will describe a federal program that provides social marketing training and TA to enable grantees to implement systems change in the field of children’s mental health service delivery. A logic model illustrating the strategies to increase awareness and change behavior will be presented. In addition, the case study includes lessons from the field that can be beneficial for any national organization that serves as a catalyst for systems change in local communities. The article will address the lessons gleaned from these case studies that can be applied to social marketing efforts across different fields, including how to collaborate and connect with the appropriate audience, ways to incorporate storytelling and data to effect systems change, and the importance of using culturally and linguistically competent approaches in social marketing. The specific focus of the article will be on social marketing as a component of the system of care approach. System of care is an organizational framework that requires the restructuring of the delivery of mental health services and improve the effectiveness of the interventions used to meet the complex and changing needs of children, youth, and young adults with serious mental health problems and their families (Stroul, Blau, & Friedman, 2010). The article will begin with a brief background on children’s mental health issues. The systems of care approach will be presented, and the role of social marketing in the development, expansion, and sustainability of the approach will be described. The article will present case studies from the field that demonstrate how the social marketing approach has been applied to change child-serving systems in local communities. These educational case studies will highlight how the social marketing approach facilitates behavior change among child-serving professionals, community leaders, families, and youth. The specific social marketing strategies that had an impact in these settings will be highlighted. Finally, the article will describe new social marking evaluation tools currently being implemented in the field to measure the impact of social marketing strategies. |