COVID-19 has a disproportionately higher impact on Black and Latinx communities, many of whom face lack of access and barriers to mental health care. Our project teaches about mental wellness and its benefits, monitoring stress, self-care, person-to-person comfort and getting professional help. By providing education and resources, our goal was to reduce distress and trauma in racially and ethnically diverse communities, foster short and long-term functioning and coping skills and decrease the stigma of seeking help.

This was a highly collaborative project that started with community input to help select the topics to be covered in 10 short animated videos about mental health. These topics also informed expansion of the library's lending collection to include culturally appropriate books on mental health. The videos were released in both English and Spanish and feature dialects specific to the most impacted communities, so that the translations feel authentic to the neighborhoods that the project aimed to reach.

The videos were launched through a series of in-person and virtual bilingual neighborhood programs led by mental health experts to facilitate conversations about mental health and wellness. Approximately 90% participants said that they were interested in attending similar programs and 86% agreed or strongly agreed that the programs inspired them to take action. The videos have received over 15,500 views and two thirds of these views were of the Spanish language videos.