New Initiative Seeks to Connect Veterans and First Responders With Mental Health Resources
by RYAN MILEJCZAK
A new initiative here in Central Florida seeks to help veterans and first responders struggle with mental health challenges. The Heroes Wellness Collective, launched by Lake Wales-based Operation Recovery, seeks to create a centralized, online platform that connects veterans and first responders with mental health resources, peer support, and professional assistance.
“If you look at the mental health crisis, the most recent numbers show over 50 million Americans struggle with mental health,” explains Jon Collette, founder and CEO of Operation Recovery. “If you take a step back and look at veterans, it’s ingrained in the veteran culture to not ask for help, and that creates a major stigma and barriers to care. That’s part of what we hope HWC can address.”
Building on a Foundation
While HWC is a new initiative, Collette is no stranger to supporting veterans. His story begins with his parents’ food truck, Gyros for Heroes, which used its profits to give back to vets and first responders by donating them to related charities. In 2020, they decided to create their own foundation, the Gyros for Heroes Foundation, to support veterans and first responders directly. Then, in 2021, as the U.S. was pulling its troops out of Afghanistan, Collette saw an opportunity to help with this initiative and assist in safely evacuating people from the country.
“We got connected with Task Force Pineapple, who were evacuating people out of Afghanistan. I said, ‘Well, I have this nonprofit, how can I help?’ ” Collette explains. “So we changed our name to Operation Recovery on a Friday, and by the following Monday, we had raised over a million dollars. From August through October, we ran about nine evacuation flights and got a little over 3,000 people evacuated out of Afghanistan.”
It was this past fall that Operation Recovery began thinking about their next plan.
“We looked at things and said, ‘You know, there’s a lot of organizations that we’ve connected with, but it seems like everyone kind of silos their own missions off,’ ” explains Collette. “And that seemed like a problem that we could potentially solve. We could take this diverse network of organizations that we’ve created and create a comprehensive ecosystem of support.”
With that, the Heroes Wellness Collective was born.
A Unified Effort
HWC works to connect veterans with the resources they need and support them in their mental health struggles, with the following goals:
- Ensuring veterans, first responders, and their family members have access to mental health resources regardless of geographic or economic barriers.
- Addressing the stigma associated with mental health issues.
- Using technologies to provide effective, culturally competent, comprehensive mental health care.
- Building a network of partners working together towards common goals in mental health.
- Supporting research to identify effective interventions and advocate for policies that improve mental health care infrastructure.
Through these efforts, HWC hopes to achieve a “mental health moonshot.”
“I first saw the concept of the mental health moonshot in an article on Fast Company,” explains Collette. “It calls for things like improvements in technology, changes in stigmas around mental health, and for greater community collaboration. Basically, we’re trying to emphasize the need for collective effort across the nation to help achieve this change in mental health.”
To illustrate how HWC helps veterans, Collette shared a story.
“We had an organization come to us and say, ‘We have a veteran in crisis.’ And another organization we’re working with said, ‘Give us his name and phone number, and we’ll give him a call.’ That whole exchange happened within three minutes on the platform, and within 30 minutes, the veteran, who was a Marine, was on the phone and connected with another Marine to talk things out. Within an hour, we had him in a facility receiving assistance. And that was happening all over the country; the veteran was from Georgia, and the organization that we spoke with was in Wisconsin. This is a nationwide network.”
HWC is already seeing success, and their partners — like Dr. Pamela Arnell, executive director for the veteran- and first responder-focused nonprofit, 22Zero.org — are thrilled to be a part of the mission.
“Operation Recovery reached out to me many months ago, and after some meetings and discussions I was completely on board,” Arnell says. “We’ve already started working with several mission clients through them, and one reason I’ve really enjoyed working with HWC is because they’re like-minded individuals. I’m absolutely beyond grateful and blessed they reached out to me.”
Enhancing the Network
As it continues to grow, HWC — which relies solely on donations —continues to seek more partners for its mission.
“I would like other organizations to take notice of HWC. Our doors are open, and they’re welcome to join. They can continue doing the work they’re already doing, we’re just going to help them do it better,” Collette says
To get involved, learn more, or donate, go to operationrecovery.org/health-wellness-initiative/ or email app@heroeswellnesscollective.org.