TRAILS

• Student mental health focus areas: Develop life and character-building skills, Promote Social and School Connectedness, Equip Staff and Students to Recognize and Respond to Distress, Ensure Student Access to Effective Mental Health Treatment
• Product category: Check-ins, Coaching/mentorship, Crisis intervention, Curriculum/lessons, Self-guided activities
• Tiers of intervention: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3
• Grade levels: Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade
• End user(s): Administrators, Clinical Team, Parents, Students, Teachers
• District experience: <1,000 students, 1,000-5,000 students, 5,001-20,000 students, 20,001-50,000 students, 50,001-100,000 students
• Free version available?: Free version is available nationwide.
• Use of AI: Today, TRAILS uses AI only internally—not in the product that users engage with. Within clinical guardrails and human oversight, AI helps TRAILS' program team adapt and curate its existing evidence-based library so content fits each context. It does not power any chatbot, screening, risk detection, personalization, or automated decision in the product. TRAILS is developing its AI approach with the schools it serves, and won't center AI at the expense of clinical fidelity or trust.

• Intended outcomes: TRAILS aims to equip every adult in a school to support student mental health with evidence-based, CBT-informed practices, so help reaches students through the trusted adults already around them. Intended outcomes include greater staff preparedness and competency; a consistent, shared language of support across the whole school; students who can access support across tiers of need; and school-level gains in the outcomes student mental health drives, like attendance and behavior.
• Demonstrated outcomes: A 2025 Institute of Education Sciences randomized controlled trial in a large, high-need urban district found statistically significant decreases in chronic absenteeism and disciplinary incidents, plus increased student use of coping skills—consistent across racial and ethnic subgroups. Evaluations also show consistent gains in staff preparedness, confidence, and use of evidence-based practices. Now reaching 1,500+ schools. Evidence of impact: trailstowellness.org.

• Privacy & security: TRAILS collects no student-level data for under-18s and is built to align with FERPA and COPPA. HIPAA doesn't apply—no patient/health data is collected. TRAILS uses commercially reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards. AI features are internal-only; identifiable data is never used to train external AI models.
• Crisis protocols: TRAILS does not detect, triage, or escalate crises, and has no automated or AI-enabled risk detection. Its support forms handle only product questions and direct users to their school's protocols for safety concerns. Suicide prevention is built throughout the model: TRAILS equips staff—by role and tier—to recognize concerns early, respond to risk, support collaborative safety planning, refer, and manage re-entry and postvention, always following each school's own crisis policies and protocols.

TRAILS shares regular reports with schools, districts, and regional agencies on program usage. The platform adds an in-product dashboard where school leaders can view staff registration and engagement, most-used resources, and staff-reported use with students—helping them track and support implementation.

• Web accessibility: The TRAILS platform targets WCAG 2.2 Level AA, with accessibility built into its design and ongoing review as enhancements are built.
• Language accessibility: Translation is a core part of TRAILS' program development. Student- and family-facing resources are available in Spanish, and modules and videos include Spanish closed captioning. The full platform is not yet translated. TRAILS is growing its Spanish offerings and plans to add more languages over time, working to meet state and district requirements.