Read the full article on EdTech.
Ever wonder about the more technical aspects of implementing well-being solutions on college campuses?
Our VP of Product, Andrew Baker, and VP of Clinical Programs, Nathaan Demers, Psy.D. recently sat down with EdTech Magazine to explore our work supporting student success in higher education, as well as navigating the nuances of developing confidential tools that allow students to prioritize their well-being on their own terms. Be sure to check out an excerpt below and read the full article on their website!
Because of the negative stigma still attached to mental illness and the use of mental health services, and because of the sensitive nature of the information people may be sharing, providing an app that was 100 percent trustworthy and anonymous was an imperative for the developers at YOU and for the more than 200 colleges and universities that now use the service.
“We knew that if students had any inclination that their educators, their faculty members, their RAs or the folks at the universities who work with them would have access to data indicating whether they’re having a substance abuse problem or some other type of sensitive information, that it would be a huge barrier to using the tool,” says Andrew Baker, vice president of product at Grit Digital. “Student privacy and confidentiality has always been a core, foundational principle, both in the design as well as in the technical software engineering.”
To accomplish that, YOU is typically tied to a university’s single sign-on solution, allowing the platform to authenticate with a firewall that’s already in place to guarantee user privacy.
