The Joe Burrow Foundation and Nationwide Children’s Hospital will launch The Burrow Blueprint in Baton Rouge schools beginning this school year. The initiative will provide Louisiana school clinics with tools to treat anxiety, depression and ADHD with medication and follow-up assessments.
The Burrow Blueprint named Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Health as the program’s first-ever recipient in Louisiana to help empower trusted school-based providers to deliver timely, compassionate mental health care.
The idea to equip public schools and their clinics with mental health diagnostic and prescribing tools originated in Ohio, the home state of the Burrow Foundation.
Robin Burrow, formerly an elementary school principal in Meigs County, Ohio, stepped down to serve as the foundation’s secretary and treasurer in her son’s name.
Robin Burrow talks with Mary Kay Irwin, Senior Director of School Health, as the Joe Burrow Foundation partners with Nationwide Children’s Hospital on a school-based mental health initiative on Monday, July 28, 2025 at the Broadmoor High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Since then, the Burrows have sought ways to address student mental health in Louisiana. In Ohio, they partnered with Nationwide Children’s Hospital to expand school-based primary care with behavioral services.
The program saw massive success — increasing diagnosis and treatment of students without burdening a workforce plagued by shortages all while bypassing wait times of over four months per case.
“Like Louisiana, we have a workforce shortage problem in mental health,” said Mary Kay Irwin, senior director of School Health of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio. “There’s a lot of people working on pipeline programming to encourage more people to become mental health providers — which is fantastic. But those things don’t help address the problems right now.”
It can take months to get an appointment for behavioral health concerns. In addition to the initial appointment, students will need to be evaluated over multiple sessions before determining if they need medication.
Mary Kay Irwin, Senior Director of School Health, talks with Robin and Jimmy Burrow as the Joe Burrow Foundation partners with Nationwide Children’s Hospital on a school-based mental health initiative on Monday, July 28, 2025 at the Broadmoor High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
By that point, a struggling student may already be falling behind academically or socially.
The program is a nine-module virtual series created for primary care providers in schools to learn how to diagnose, manage and integrate treatment for anxiety, depression and ADHD for students in school clinics.
“This is what Joe envisioned when we started this foundation,” Robin Burrow said. “We are trying to think outside of the box in how we service the communities that mean so much to us.”
Hope Clary, a nurse practitioner at Broadmoor High School, sees students every day in the clinic — from minor headaches, to serious health concerns or even to students just stopping by to say hello to a friendly face.
Hope Clary, nurse practitioner, talks with Sheryl Miller, behavioral health provider, at an announcement of the Joe Burrow Foundation partnering with Nationwide Children’s Hospital on a school-based mental health initiative on Monday, July 28, 2025 at the Broadmoor High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
In practice, nurse practitioners, like Clary, will work closely with on-site social workers to assess and establish a diagnosis and treatment plan for a student. Over multiple sessions — and talks with parents — the team of providers will be able to provide prescriptions to mental health medications.
Beyond that, the clinician team at each school will provide follow-up appointments and assessments with students.
Sheryl Miller, the supervisor for behavioral health in the Baton Rouge school system, expects participating schools to be able to provide this on-site medical service by Labor Day, including:
- Broadmoor High School
- Glasgow Middle School
- Glen Oaks Magnet High School
- Istrouma Middle and High School
- Northeast High School
- Scotlandville High School
- Westdale Middle School
This is the Burrow Blueprint’s first footing in Louisiana to tackle behavioral health needs in students and children.
“None of this is possible if it hadn’t been for Joe (Burrow)’s experience at LSU,” Jimmy Burrow said. “LSU provided us the platform to do these things.”
As the mental health crisis among students grows, the Burrow Blueprint hopes to be a game-changer — one school clinic at a time.
Robin and Jimmy Burrow pose with members of the school, Our Lady of the Lake hospital and Nationwide Children’s Hospital following an announcement of the Joe Burrow Foundation partnering with Nationwide Children’s Hospital on a school-based mental health initiative on Monday, July 28, 2025 at the Broadmoor High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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