Prepared Remarks – Teaming Up for Youth conference (July 17, 2025)

It’s an honor to welcome you all to Teaming Up for Youth: A Mental Health & Wellbeing Summit. We are thrilled to be here with so many dedicated leaders, partners, and changemakers from across Colorado, all united by a shared commitment: to support the health, well-being, and future of our youth.

First and foremost, I want to extend a huge thank you to our incredible co-hosts for making today possible. The leadership and partnership of the Denver Broncos Foundation has been instrumental in shaping this event and in elevating the importance of youth mental health across our state.

We also want to give a heartfelt thank you to these local foundations who helped make today’s important gathering possible through their generous sponsorship: The Rose Community Foundation, The El Pomar Foundation, Caring for Colorado, The Colorado Trust, and Gary Community Ventures. Your investment and continued partnership send a powerful message that it is our collective obligation to show up for, engage with, invest in, and help lift up our youth and their champions.

We are at a pivotal moment for young people.

Across the country and here in our own communities, youth are facing a mental health crisis that is both urgent and deeply complex. Even before the pandemic, rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people were steadily rising. But in the years since, the situation has intensified. According to the CDC’s last Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 2023, nearly 4 in 10 high school students reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless.[1] For teenage girls, that number rises to over half.[2] And suicide remains a leading cause of death among young people ages 10 to 24.

And it’s not just youth mental health that is in crisis, our youth are also struggling more broadly with their well-being. Young people are too often feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, and uncertain about their futures – and unable to tell trusted adults about their feelings. They’re navigating a world shaped by social media, climate anxiety, academic pressure, economic instability, and shifting social norms—all while still developing the skills and supports to manage those stressors.

At the same time, we’re seeing deep inequities in how this crisis shows up and who has access to care. LGBTQ+ youth, youth of color, youth in rural areas, and young people experiencing poverty or housing instability are all more likely to experience poor mental health—and less likely to receive the support they need. For example, according to the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, 11% of Colorado high school students seriously considered attempting suicide during the past year, but when we look at the data for LGBTQ+ students, that number rises substantially. And according to the Trevor Project, while 84% of LGBTQ+ young people indicated they wanted support from a counselor or mental health professional in the last year, half of those who wanted care did not receive it.[3] The number of youth able to access care decreased even more for youth of color, with Black and African American LGBTQ+ young people accessing care just 40% of the time.[4]

Our office’s Safe2Tell program data also demonstrates the need for action. Safe2Tell reports related to mental health and suicide continue to be some of the top complaints each month. This is why, as Colorado’s Attorney General (and as a parent and community member), I have been committed to supporting youth mental health.

When I took office, I had little idea of just how much I would work on dire topics related to youth mental health and wellbeing, from overseeing the Safe2Tell program, our intervention into social media’s impact on teens, our work on legislation that supports youth wellbeing, our robust response to the opioid epidemic, and our commitment to funding programs through grants that support excellent community organizations addressing youth mental health.

I see in this room many programs and leaders who have helped shape and inform our youth mental health portfolio at the Department of Law. That includes school resource officers, many of whom champion the Safe2Tell program to help keep their students safe. And students who helped us develop youth-informed messaging by serving as Safe2Tell ambassadors. Or partners that are working with our Office of Financial Empowerment to support families, or partners to our opioid response work that provide students with safe and supportive spaces to succeed in recovery.

In 2021, we partnered with Rocky Mountain Health Plans to launch the Healthy Youth/Strong Colorado Fund, which provided $5 million to youth empowerment and mental health programs across the state. Our opioid settlement dollars are also making impacts in every part of this state, with over $130 million received by the state to date and over $44 million expended. Funds are supporting essential services across the continuum of care, including funds to support youth. And this year, we’ve worked to invest funding from our office’s settlement with Juul back into the community to support youth mental health and wellbeing and tackle the youth vaping crisis head-on. We are proud to fund the work of many of you through those grant rounds. Our partners from the Colorado Department of Education are here today too, whom we have worked with to distribute funds to almost thirty local education providers to support vaping education and prevention across Colorado.

But funding is only part of the equation. The heart of this work is connection—and that’s what today is all about. We hope this conference sparks new ideas, new relationships, and new possibilities. Whether you work in early childhood, prevention, a clinical setting, education, philanthropy, or a community-based program—or you’re a young person or a parent—your voice and perspectives are key to finding and implementing sustainable and meaningful solutions.

There are so many luminaries in this room today who are working in their communities to support youth. I want to be sure to recognize some of the school leaders here today, including Karen Cheser from Durango, Brian Hill from Mesa County, and Luis Murillo from Alamosa, whom you will hear from in sessions throughout the day. Thank you also to superintendents Alex Marerro from Denver, Eric Owen from Hayden, Mike Crawford from Mapleton, Ronda Rein from Pueblo, and all the other school leaders taking time out of their precious summer schedule to join us today.

I also want to welcome the state legislators who are joining us today: Senators Judy Amabile, Lisa Frizell, and Byron Pelton, and Representative Lindsay Gilchrist. These champions have led many efforts at the state legislature to support children, youth, and their families, including legislation that will prevent smartphones from interfering with learning.  Afterall, students who have addiction behavior with smartphones are twice as likely to consider suicide and self-harm, not to mention, are more distracted and less able to learn.  Finally, I want to welcome former Broncos wide receiver, Brandon Lloyd and former Broncos running back, Montee Ball, who have both used their stories of recovery to become advocates for youth mental health and wellbeing at a national level.

Stuart Jenkins from the Boys & Girls Club of Colorado is here. And Aaron Miltenberger, who runs the Boys & Girls Club in the San Luis Valley and Jamie and Cristalray Dominguez from the Valley’s Shooting Stars Cultural Center — thank you for making the trip and for your partnership over the years. Jami Hayes from Garfield County’s YouthZone, who isn’t able to be here today but sent others from YouthZone, planted the seed for this conference over coffee many years back, and John Kelly, who runs the state’s Youth Mental Health Corps are here. We have philanthropic leaders, like Mark Andersen from the Craig Schenkman Foundation and Dave Ryan from the Anschutz Foundation. And all of the counselors, public health professionals, principals, youth engagement specialists, parents, suicide prevention leaders, and so many more – thank you for your work, your time, and your partnership.

Finally, I want to thank the thirty youth leaders that are here today. Thank you for your time today, for stepping up to serve and support yourself, your peers, and your community and fight for wellbeing and hopeful futures for our youth. I encourage everyone here to connect with the young leaders in your sessions today and during networking sessions.

We know that to truly make a difference, we must act early and upstream. Preventing substance use and vaping before they start is one of the most powerful strategies we have to protect young people, and it will take a coordinated, sustained effort from all of us.

And there is hope! According to the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, 75% of youth say they have an adult they can go to for help with a serious problem, a number that is up from past years. 70% of youth think their teacher notices when they do a good job in school and lets them know about it. 92% of youth feel safe in their schools. These stats are a credit to the work being done by so many of you in the audience that are building positive school climates to ensure that your students feel safe and supported in their communities. We look forward to this day of collaboration and innovation to learn more about how we can best engage and support youth across Colorado.

Thank you again for being here, for the work you do every day, and for your unwavering commitment to Colorado’s youth. Let’s make today a day of learning, inspiration, and connection.

[1] Mental Health and Suicide Risk Among High School Students and Protective Factors — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023 (opens new tab)

[2] Mental Health and Suicide Risk Among High School Students and Protective Factors — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023 (opens new tab)

[3] The Trevor Project – Mental Health Care Access and Use among LGBTQ+ Young People (opens new tab)

[4] The Trevor Project – Mental Health Care Access and Use among LGBTQ+ Young People (opens new tab)