(light calming music) - [Pamela] Tonight, mental health counseling as close as a computer screen is giving hope to Rhode Island students and their parents.

- The results are amazing.

- [Michelle] And the Trump administration's research cuts hit Rhode Island universities.

What impact will they have?

- I think the cuts, if we do nothing today, we'll set the field back decades.

- [Pamela] And one Rhode Island family's resilience.

- They had to fight for their lives.

(joyful music) (joyful music) (joyful music) - Good evening and welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm Michelle San Miguel.

Tonight we begin with a story about how Rhode Island is trying a new tool to tackle the mental health crisis among students.

- Yeah, local school districts are turning to telepsychology in the belief that high tech offers high hopes for happier, more well balanced children.

This is part of our series of reports during May in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month.

And this story was generously underwritten through a grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island (light calming music) 10-year-old Kaidin Sanchez is musical, artistic and a good student, but like so many children, the fourth grader wasn't happy about school days.

- I just felt sad in my brain and it's been like kind of hard and I've been like stressed in the past.

- Should we separate them?

- Yeah, we should.

- [Pamela] And so is his mother, Sairis Reyes.

- I was so stressed out, I didn't know what to do.

He was having a really tough time getting to school.

In the morning, like he would cry every morning.

It would take me like a half hour just to get him inside of the building.

- Okay, just one more.

- [Pamela] Reyes says her son would complain of a stomach ache just to stay home.

- I would be late to work all the time.

- Hmm, which way?

- [Pamela] Yet deep inside, Kaidin Sanchez says he knew the reason.

- Why?

- Because there is like the different kids who didn't know personal space or like they didn't know boundaries of mine and I was like kind of mad.

(kids chattering) - [Pamela] A recent study by the Rhode Island child advocacy agency, KIDS COUNT finds many of the ocean state's children are suffering from depression.

36% of high school students and 30% of those in middle school registered degrees of sadness and hopelessness.

(footsteps pattering) Ana Riley, Superintendent of the Bristol Warren School District says classrooms across the state are challenged by students wrestling with a range of social and emotional issues.

- For some students it could be just some mild school anxiety and they just need some supports or some extra encouragement to, you know, be at school and complete their work.

Some behavioral outbursts, I would say more bullying, more self-image issues, more self-esteem issues just based on the images they're seeing and what they're surrounded by on social media.

- [Pamela] Riley says schools are familiar with those mental health issues, but there's a more recent factor at play, the pandemic.

- Today, our current kindergartners were just born or young toddlers when Covid started.

And so that wonderful interaction with family and strangers and just seeing facial expressions, they missed all of that, you know, they really had too many months without being able to interact with other people and show and react to emotion.

And so they bring that to school with them.

(kids chattering) - [Pamela] This growing need for mental health treatment coupled with a shortage of counselors both in schools and private practice, prompted the Bristol Warren School District to pilot a new supplemental program in March of 2024.

It's virtual therapy called Cartwheel.

- They are available eight to eight, seven days a week and it is a licensed mental health therapist who will do one-to-one therapy with students or with families.

It can be anywhere from six to 10 weeks depending on the need.

And if they feel like the patient would benefit from an extended service, most cases can go as long as six months.

- [Pamela] A student is referred to Cartwheel by a school social worker.

Services are available in six languages, including Spanish and Portuguese, and parents are offered online advice and strategies to assist their child.

Riley also gives Cartwheel telepsychology an A for rapid appointment scheduling.

- It only takes 24 to 48 hours for Cartwheel to reach out to families, and then they have an appointment within seven to 10 days.

- These are all where of the white studs go.

- [Pamela] Easy access is an important feature for worried parents like Reyes who found therapists in her community were booked solid.

- They had a waiting list or some of them was a nine month waiting period.

I didn't wanna wait because it was starting to get worse.

- [Pamela] Kaidin attends Achievement First Charter School in Providence, which uses Cartwheel as does the Warwick School system.

Reyes says Kaidin has just completed his virtual sessions and she's seen a big change because of the online counselor.

- She helped me with coping skills and she would always like tell me like to breathe in and breathe out if I ever get angry or like trace a shape while breathing in and breathing out.

- Were you really able to connect with her?

Did you feel comfortable doing it online?

- I think it was comfortable because I got to like talk about all my feelings I had through the day.

- [Pamela] In December, the Rhode Island Department of Education announced a similar virtual program to expand clinical care in local schools.

Hazel Health is being rolled out in various phases based on individual community needs.

As for how successful Telepsychology can be opposed to in-person therapy?

- I think it's been widely effective for students who wouldn't have been able to even get into a counseling session at this point.

For me, the idea that they got immediate assistance outweighs the risk of saying in-person is better than telehealth.

- Joe Trunzo is Associate Director of the School of Behavioral Health and Sciences at Bryant University and President of the Rhode Island Psychological Association.

He says the organization supports the use of virtual counseling in general.

Is it as effective for children and adolescents?

- I think the older the client is, I think the easier and the more effective it can be.

Where it gets particularly tricky is when you're doing any kind of formal assessment, neuropsychological evaluations, comprehensive behavioral evaluations, those can be a lot more difficult to do over telehealth.

I think the preference is always to be in person when it's possible.

- [Pamela] Trunzo also says there's help on the horizon to provide Rhode Island with more clinicians.

Bryant is preparing to offer a doctorate program in clinical psychology starting in the fall semester.

- Within a few years we'll be getting some bonafide licensed clinicians out into the community to help to address this problem.

- [Pamela] But while that's still often the future, for now, virtual mental health therapy seems to be gaining traction.

Superintendent Riley says in Bristol Warren results are still preliminary, however... - What we see is anecdotally in classrooms and in the data that kids are coming to school, attendance has improved.

We've seen those students performing better in class, being engaged, maybe even blossoming some friend groups.

- We need four.

I'll do the black one.

- [Pamela] And for this mother and son, telehealth was transformative.

- The results are amazing.

We go to school on time every day.

- What's different about school these days?

- I'm not like sad in my brain, I'm just hugging my mom saying goodbye and going in school.

- And how is it when you're in school now?

How is it different?

- I'm getting calmer and calmer and more calmer.

- And that makes me happy.

If he's happy, I'm happy, yeah.

(Pamela laughing) - In the Bristol Warren regional school system, parents are only responsible for their insurance copay for the telehealth services.

If a child does not have insurance, the district will cover the cost.

Up next, since President Trump took office, tens of millions of dollars of federal funding for scientific research have been canceled in Rhode Island abruptly stopping studies on HIV, mental health, coastal resiliency and more.

Our contributor, Steph Machado, looked at the impacts of the cuts to scientific advancement and Rhode Island's future.

- You know, as a scientist, I feel that the field is under attack.

- [Steph] In 2019, researcher Dr. Amy Nunn was watching the State of the Union address and heard President Trump say this.

- My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years.

We have made incredible strides, incredible.

(audience clapping) - I was lying in bed and I heard him say that, and I almost fell out of the bed because I had never expected that President Trump would announce the first plan to end the epidemic.

- [Steph] Six years later, just months into Trump's second term, the Trump administration canceled Nunn's research aimed at reducing the spread of HIV.

- Well, I was alarmed and I was really surprised.

He's basically undoing a lot of the progress from his first administration, our trial responded to all of the priorities that he had laid out previously.

- [Steph] Nunn's research for the Rhode Island Public Health Institute, which runs a Providence clinic for LGBTQ patients called Open Door Health, was testing a new protocol to encourage the use of PrEP a medication that prevents someone from contracting HIV, focusing on black and Latino men.

- Black, gay men have about a one in two lifetime chance of contracting HIV.

That's higher than some HIV prevalence rates in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Just to put it in context.

For a white man, it's one in 140.

So people of color have much higher chances of contracting HIV.

And so this trial is really designed to reduce transmission among those populations.

- [Steph] Nunn's team received the $3.7 million grant through Brown University from the National Institutes of Health, NIH, and was in the middle of enrolling 300 patients in Rhode Island, Mississippi, and Washington DC.

The termination letter said the award no longer effectuates agency priorities and so-called diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics which harms the health of Americans.

- This isn't just DEI, this is about saving the lives of people who are the sickest or who are the most likely to get sick.

And now we're eradicating our commitments to those vulnerable people and we have a moral issue with that.

- More than a thousand grants for scientific research and public health have been terminated by the Trump administration across the country, including more than 50 that have come in steadily to Brown University and the University of Rhode Island since February.

And it's not clear when the terminations might stop.

- I think the cuts, if we do nothing today, will set the field back decades.

- Dr. Philip Chan works with Nunn at Open Door Health and has had three research grants canceled.

- It is incredibly, incredibly rare for an NIH grant to be canceled.

You basically have to do something really wrong for that to happen.

To just uniformly cancel, you know, all these grants based on political ideology or because they're enrolling transgender people is really never happened before.

- [Steph] Many of the terminated grants have been for studies involving gender, race or LGBTQ issues.

- So here you can see down at Quonset there were a couple of impacts.

- [Steph] But not all.

At the University of Rhode Island, Dr. Austin Becker has spent years developing a tool that tracks the potential impact of a hurricane on critical infrastructure.

- And then you can see here's something down at the port, a few other things down at the port that have been impacted.

- [Steph] The Department of Homeland Security terminated the research on April 8th.

- I was pretty shocked by it.

You know, we hear a lot about DEI work getting terminated and climate change work getting terminated, but this work is really focused on today's challenges for all coastal communities in Rhode Island and beyond the borders of Rhode Island.

- Were you given a reason at all?

- The only reason we were given is that the work did not align with the priorities of the Trump administration.

His tool called Rhode Island Coastal Hazards Analysis, Modeling and Prediction or RI-CHAMP was being used in projects for the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, multiple cities, the Port of Providence and the US Coast Guard.

I'm struck by the fact that some of your work was meant to benefit the Coast Guard because that means it was for the federal government and yet the federal government cut your funding.

What do you make of that?

- Well, I don't think anybody looked at the individual projects.

- [Steph] The widespread cuts come at a pivotal time for scientific research in Rhode Island.

State leaders funneled $45 million last year into a new agency called the Rhode Island Life Sciences Hub, aimed at strengthening the state's life sciences sector, starting in Providence's jewelry district.

(machine beeping) On Richmond Street, the Hub's first big project is nearly complete, a new state health lab topped by incubator space called Ocean State Labs, where the state hopes to lure private tenants to do cutting edge research, resulting in medical innovations.

- It's a whole floor above that and then... - [Steph] Dr. Mark Turco is the Life Science Hub's first CEO.

He was confirmed to the job by the state senate one day after President Trump's inauguration.

- And clearly what's going on at the federal level right now is a headwind for the science, you know, field.

That said, we have made incredible progress and strides, you know, in the life science sector here in Rhode Island.

And, you know, our thought and my thought is that we can continue, you know, to continue with the momentum moving forward.

- [Steph] Despite the upheaval in the research community, Turco is optimistic the labs will be filled and that philanthropic and private sector money could fill in the gaps where federal funding is cut.

- I think this is a time where we need to think out-of-the-box a little bit.

You know, we can't control what is going on at the federal level.

So how can we basically look at our opportunities where we can differentiate ourselves and think of things a little bit differently.

- Do you think it has been a mistake that in general scientific research has relied on the federal government to come to fruition?

- I do think that there has been a reliance that is probably beyond what we should have had a reliance on.

And some of these cuts actually in my opinion, need to occur.

You know, we have spent a lot of money and, you know, we need to show a lot of return for investment on some of these dollars.

And, you know, I don't think that that's bad to be sure that we're, you know, positioned ourselves to show a return on investment, you know, coming out of our academic institutions.

(steel crashing) - Brown University is building its own massive 300,000 square foot lab space in the jewelry district, which will be the largest academic laboratory in the state when completed, aimed at housing 700 researchers.

But the university has said in court documents, "If the NIH is allowed to follow through with planned cuts to overhead, the university may have to halt construction."

Brown University President, Christina Paxson, declined to be interviewed for this story, citing the uncertainty around President Trump's threat to cut $510 million from the university.

A spokesperson says Brown has not been formally notified of this cut, but they're planning for every possible scenario.

The worst case could mean widespread cuts to research, significant layoffs and a ripple effect on the local economy.

- I think this is an attack on science and truth, and it's ultimately a way to control messaging.

And that is terrifying because the nation's top universities are under assault because of their commitment to finding the truth and finding answers.

And I think that we might be in the middle of a cultural revolution in which that's no longer valued.

- [Steph] NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya sought to quell concerns about the cuts in late April during a five hour Zoom meeting with an NIH advisory council.

- I don't think that that they're aimed at stopping fundamental research that advances the health and wellbeing of minority populations.

I wouldn't have accepted this job if that was the case.

- [Steph] But scientists say restarting research isn't easy.

It can take years to apply for grants, secure funding, hire staff, enroll patients, and conduct the studies.

- I think it might take a generation to bounce back from this even if we see a renewed commitment later on.

- Losing funding for projects like this right in the middle of them, it's, you know, it's several steps backwards.

I hope we can find some other funding to continue the work in the future.

When we do, we will have a lot of lost ground just to get back to where we were three weeks ago.

- There are multiple lawsuits challenging President Trump's cuts to scientific research, including one filed last week by Brown and 11 other universities over that latest round of cuts from the National Science Foundation.

For more of Steph's reporting on the story, please go to globe.com/ri.

Finally, tonight we take another look at a story about one of the many cultures calling Rhode Island home.

Hmong people are an ethnic group that originated in China with a diaspora reaching across the globe.

Their journey to the United States began after one of the longest and most divisive wars in American history came to an end.

In October, producer Isabella Jibilian interviewed Hmong family about their history.

This story is part of our continuing My Take series.

(birds chirping) - It's pretty good to make a soup.

(light piano music) - Very few times, my mom and dad have told me they love me, but I know based on how they show me and based how they feed me.

When they feed you, it's a sign of love.

My name is Johnny Kue and this is my take on growing up Hmong.

The term Hmong means free man.

I would describe it as an ethnic group.

We don't have our own country, we have our own language.

Hmong, I guess the best way I can say it is we're not a place, we are a people.

In the Hmong tradition, a lot of our history was passed down through oral history or through tapestry.

In our culture, we call this Paj Ntaub.

This one in particular explains my family's journey exactly.

My mother and father grew up in Laos and it was around the time the Vietnam War happened that my father was recruited to join the Vietnam War.

- [Reporter] Laos, the strategic key to Southeast Asia's richest areas.

- The United States did not know how to navigate the jungles and because the Hmongs were familiar with the jungles and the terrain, they were sort of like navigators in the jungles.

When my dad was first recruited into the secret army, he was about 15 years old.

When the US left the war, they had to fight for their lives.

They were enemies of Laos and the orders were to kill the Hmong families on site or to put them in reeducation camps.

When my family were in the concentration camp and they were slated for either reeducation or they were slated to be executed, my sister, my oldest sister at the time, she was so skinny that she was able to get a hand untied from the ropes.

And after she got her hand free, she was able to untie my family.

They were able to escape those camps.

They decided to flee Laos.

The only way was to cross the river that was adjacent to Laos in Thailand.

There were soldiers that were guarding the rivers.

My sister at the time, she was probably one years old, she was on my mom's back and she slipped off and my father just said that if we go back for her, that there's a chance that we all might be dead.

But my mother was able to rescue her and they would, thankfully they were able to get across the river safely.

Eventually they did settle into Thailand where they stayed for a while until the United States offered them political refuge.

We lived in South Providence near the West End, about one block away from the Knight Memorial Library.

I have a really, really big family, seven siblings.

Four were born in Loas and Thailand, and three of us were born in the United States.

I am the last of the seven.

I am the baby of the family.

(light piano music) My father was an immigration caseworker and he would help get a lot of immigrants into Rhode Island.

A lot of the folks coming in did not have a voice and there was a lot of fear for the refugees coming in for the first time.

And my father did a lot of work with community leaders to help ease those fears and to help those early refugee settlers to become a part of the community.

So the Hmong community was always tight knit.

My father told me, if you're traveling somewhere and you're tired and it's late and you have nowhere to stay, find a phone book and you look up the last name Kue.

And you say, "Listen, I am so-and-so's son from Rhode Island.

Is it okay if we stay at your house tonight?"

And he said that they would open up their home for you.

And that's just the community that I've been taught.

There was definitely a time in my life where I was trying to suppress like who I was because I was trying to fit in.

But as I got older, I realized how important my culture was and I realized how important I need to pass this on to my son.

It became evident that, you know, everything that my family has done to raise me the right way is because of our Hmong values.

(light piano music) (light piano music) (speaking foreign language) My name is Johnny Kup and this was my take on growing up Hmong.

- And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm Michelle San Miguel.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

Until then, please follow us on Facebook and YouTube and you can visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly, or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform, goodnight.

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