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Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble is the founder of the AAKOMA Project, a nonprofit with a mission to meet the mental health needs of young people of color. The organization offers workshops, virtual counseling and consulting. 

Youth and young people of color experience barriers to accessing psychological care for reasons beyond economic disparities.

“People worry about how they’re going to be treated when they get into that mental health professional’s chair because there are different outcomes by different aspects of identity,” Breland-Noble said. “We also know that our research literature has not done the best job of developing interventions and understanding mental illness across all different types of populations.”

The AAKOMA Project is working with researchers and institutions to collect data about youth of color on mental health, which can help drive policy changes.