OLYMPIA, WA— May marks Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to reflect on meaningful steps to expand mental and behavioral health care access for all. Washington State has been experiencing a behavioral health workforce shortage, with just one behavioral health provider for every 360 people. To help recruit the next generation of behavioral health professionals to meet this need, the Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA) launched a statewide marketing campaign, called Start Your Path, that significantly increased awareness and understanding of behavioral health among Washingtonians by nearly 30 points in the last year.

“The behavioral health field offers multiple career paths for Washingtonians, inclusive of a variety of different education levels or experience,” said Teesha Kirschbaum, director of the Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery with HCA. “To support the growing behavioral health needs of our state, we deployed this campaign to highlight the most in-demand roles in the state and to provide a simple online resource for individuals to learn more about how they can get started.”

The latest phase of the campaign drove over 232,000 people to a career development website available in English and Spanish, which offers resources on career paths, training programs and financial support available. HCA exclusively uses real behavioral health workers in videos and digital outreach to share their authentic stories and experiences. The campaign also engaged directly with over 1,000 high school and college students through in-person events to demonstrate the impact of these careers. 

“I’m proud of how far we’ve come to help Washingtonians learn about these vital careers,” said Kennedy Soileau, Chief Communications Officer at HCA. “Raising awareness is just one way we’re tackling the complex issue of workforce shortages. Together with our local and statewide partners, we will continue our efforts to bring the next generation of behavioral health providers into the field.”

To measure the campaign's impact, HCA worked with research partners to host a statewide survey before and immediately after the most recent phase of the campaign. The initial survey set a benchmark around behavioral health career awareness and campaign familiarity in the state, which was measured against the post-campaign survey. 

The online surveys each included 600 Washington State residents in the workforce, offered in English and Spanish. The findings include: 

• The Washington workforce’s understanding of behavioral health improved significantly after the campaign by 28 percentage points.
• 55% of the Washington workforce have considered a behavioral health career.
• Those ages 25–44, Spanish media consumers, men, Hispanic/Latinx audiences, and urban residents had the highest increase in the likelihood of seeking a BH career post-campaign.
• Washingtonians continue to recognize and remember the campaign, with 74% of the Washington workforce recalling seeing a Start Your Path Phase 4 campaign ad—nearly matching the Phase 3 recall rate (75%).

To validate findings, various quality control measures were employed per research best practices, including questionnaire pre-testing and validation, data cleaning, and weighting. Quotas were set by age and media language to ensure readable and comparable base sizes within Washington’s workforce age population.