Bill Smith and Amy Runyon-Harms of Inseparable lead a national advocacy organization dedicated to transforming mental health policy in the United States. Formed to build the political power needed to fix broken systems, Inseparable focuses on turning broad awareness of mental health into concrete legislative change. Their approach draws from lessons learned in other successful social movements, emphasizing strategy, coalition-building, and storytelling to drive results.

Inseparable’s approach includes:

• Running campaign-style advocacy. The organization uses coordinated strategies—public education, lobbying, polling, and coalition management—to move policy at both state and federal levels. Its structure, with separate nonprofit and political arms, gives it flexibility to push for reform while remaining compliant with advocacy laws.
• Advancing youth mental health policy. Inseparable has achieved more than 90 policy wins across the country, from securing school-based mental health coordinators to expanding access to free therapy sessions for young people. These efforts have strengthened mental health infrastructure in states like Colorado, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Alabama.
• Building bipartisan support. Through its Hopeful Futures Campaign, Inseparable works with policymakers from across the political spectrum, emphasizing shared values and the universal desire for children to have hopeful, healthy futures.
• Growing the movement. The organization trains emerging advocates through fellowships and workshops, equipping them with the skills to run effective campaigns and sustain long-term systems change.

Smith and Runyon-Harms credit their success to persistence and the ability to adapt quickly to legislative realities. Their work shows that policy progress depends on storytelling, strong partnerships, and a clear understanding of how power operates. Though challenges remain—from funding constraints to cultural resistance around discussing mental health in schools—they believe reform is possible when advocates stay united around a simple truth: mental health is a shared American concern, not a partisan one.

Connor Dalgaard's entry into mental health advocacy began in high school through Stand Together, a grant-funded program in Allegheny County that trained students to host mental health awareness events and educate peers. When the pandemic forced schools virtual in 2020, he joined the Pennsylvania Youth Advocacy Network, shifting from peer education to state-level advocacy. A breakthrough came when he and other young advocates wrote a proclamation establishing a teen mental health awareness day, signed by Pennsylvania's governor and Pittsburgh's City Council. The process was surprisingly simple, he recalls, and it showed him that change was possible when young people and adults worked together.

Today, Dalgaard works on Inseparable's campaigns and communications team, splitting his time between political programs and social media. His work focuses on making mental health an electoral issue through a nonpartisan candidate distinction called Mental Health Now. The approach includes:

• Identifying candidates at all levels of office who have lived experience with mental health conditions and are willing to commit to increasing access to care, improving crisis response, and expanding the mental health workforce.
• Providing candidates with polling data, messaging guidance, and resources they can use on campaign websites, in interviews, and in debates.
• Connecting advocacy to concrete policy priorities, including enforcing mental health parity laws so insurers cover mental health care the same way they cover physical health care, allowing mental health days as excused absences in schools, and sustaining funding for 988 crisis lines.
• Platforming young people with lived experience to speak directly to legislators, rather than having staff members without that background do the advocacy work.
• Convening young people in visible ways — 150 students on the state capitol steps, all wearing the same color — to make their concerns undeniable to decision makers.

Dalgaard has learned that mental health is far more bipartisan than people assume, and that progress has accelerated since the pandemic made the issue harder to ignore. He points to New Jersey's ARRIVE Together program as evidence that co-response models — pairing police officers with mobile crisis teams — work well for everyone involved. He also notes that young people are surprised to learn how accessible elected officials actually are, and how much influence constituents can have by submitting debate questions, calling representatives, or simply showing up.

The challenges Dalgaard identifies are structural. Mental health advocacy is more complex than single-issue campaigns because there are so many entry points — insurance reform, crisis response, prevention, workforce expansion — making it hard to distill into a coherent message. The movement also struggles to give young people agency beyond storytelling opportunities. He describes a gap where young people are given center stage at conferences but not the tools or pathways to take action afterward. He also flags rising concerns about young people turning to AI for mental health support, noting the lack of safeguards when chatbots answer questions that signal suicidal intent. His hope is that the mental health movement can find ways to platform new voices and avoid recycling the same small group of young advocates through every opportunity.