To Our Embark Family and Friends,

Embark Behavioral Health’s original program served its first family 25 years ago. Since then, we have prided ourselves in operating with the industry’s highest quality of care and safety standards.

I want to personally assure you that safety – emotional, physical, and psychological – is the primary component in all that we do, and it remains of utmost importance to us now. Furthermore, as accredited, and licensed facilities, infection control has always been a part of our programs’ every-day operations.

Despite evidence showing this new coronavirus is not particularly harmful to the majority of the younger population we serve, we want to do our part in ”flattening the curve”, slowing the spread, and keeping everyone safe. We are therefore taking this situation very seriously and instituting extra precautions.

With that in mind, back in March 2020, Embark led the way in our industry by creating a robust and multidisciplinary Embark Coronavirus Taskforce – comprised of a cross-section of doctors and nurses, clinicians, and program operators – which, since then, has been meeting and communicating regularly with our programs and the industry at large. We are closely tracking the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and local health and licensing agencies for the latest developments and best practices related to COVID-19.

In a faithful effort to forge through, we have led the way in containing COVID-19 within our industry. We have sought our opportunities to support the broader youth therapeutic community. And partnered with state licensing agencies to support them in developing best practices to share with other programs in their State.

We pioneered efforts in risk assessment, created 20 new pandemic – response protocols, and initiated rapid communication across programs. As a result, we minimized serious cases and outbreaks while continuing to serve families in the face of great adversity.

Despite these precautions, our front-line teammates are working hard to maintain normalcy for our students. Further preventing the spread in our programs and communities, and given the ‘essential health worker’ status, all our program staff members have access to the vaccine.

On the homepage of every one of our programs, you can access what we are doing within that program. This information is updated in real-time.

Particularly in times like these, we want our programs to be havens of safety: contained, many remote, full of loving and trained staff, and away from the anxiety-inducing media.

We are facing unsettling times. However, we are also provided an opportunity to root ourselves, even more, in our Core Purpose, Core Values and our Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). Our BHAG remains the same, to lead the way in driving the levels of adolescent and young adult anxiety, depression, and suicide from the all-time highs of today to all-time lows. Our Core Purpose is to create joy – the essence of joy is found through gratitude and humility, and in uncovering the meaning behind pain and suffering. During times like these, we must model empathy for those in distress, find creative ways to be of service to each other, lean on each other in trusting relationships, and take comfort in the growth that will come from this time of adversity.

If you have any questions, or if I can be of service to you, please reach out: [email protected] or feel free to request more information from our Task Force at [email protected]

Our team is honored to serve you.

With joy,

Alex Stavros

CEO, Embark Behavioral Health