Student Spotlight: Jessica Pinyerd focuses on rural mental health needs in Dubois County

As a graduate student in the IU School of Public Health and a working professional at the Indiana Department of Health, Jessica Pinyerd is uniquely positioned to understand the complexities of addressing mental health challenges in rural communities.

Originally from rural upstate New York, Jessica is a registered nurse who has called Indiana home for the past 15 years. She is now earning her master's degree in public health with a concentration in public health administration. She’s also a recipient of the Hoosier Public Health Scholarship, a fully funded scholarship for qualifying students who are part of Indiana’s public health workforce.

Jessica is balancing her studies with a full-time job at the Indiana Department of Health's Local Health Service Division as the Central Region School Health Liaison. In her role, she supports school health initiatives across 30 Hoosier counties, many of them rural.

Recently, she had the opportunity to put her skills into practice through a course that partnered with the Center for Rural Engagement's Sustaining Hoosier Communities initiative. As part of the course led by Dr. Shirley Payne, she conducted a community needs assessment of the capacity and timely access to mental health services in the Dubois County area. 

Throughout the project, Jessica uncovered some stark realities facing rural areas—provider shortages, geographic isolation, and compounding barriers that make equitable healthcare a significant challenge. "Assessing the issue was not difficult," she said. "Finding a solution was challenging."

Recognizing the link between limited mental health services and higher suicide rates in rural communities, Jessica proposed an innovative solution: integrating existing telehealth mental health services into primary care settings. This approach aims to address the barriers of provider availability, access issues, and the stigma associated with seeking specialized care. In her assessment, she proposed that the effectiveness of this intervention could be evaluated through patient feedback, program utilization, and monitoring suicide rates in the community over a five-year period.

Her project culminated in presenting her findings to the Dubois County Mental Health Committee, along with her proposed intervention to address barriers in access and capacity.

As a public health professional, Jessica recognizes the importance of community needs assessments. However, conducting one herself gave her a deeper understanding of the extensive research and data collection they require. It goes beyond just collecting survey responses to "really digging into what a community already has, what they lack, and how that affects and influences people's health decisions," she said.

Jessica is confident that the experience will benefit her full-time role as she works with rural communities to assess their population needs.

"I think it's really impactful that universities and organizations work together like this, because students are hungry to do the work. We're hungry to learn. We're hungry to apply it in a real way," she said. "I thought it was a great opportunity for myself to learn, but also for a rural community that doesn't have the same level of resources to have some assistance in understanding the needs of their community."

Jessica plans to apply her academic expertise and clinical experience as a nurse to pursue leadership positions in public health.