Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Our nation’s youth are in dire need of increased access to high-quality school-based mental health (SBMH) services. Rural youth face a unique set of risk factors contributing to poor health, including a devastating opioid epidemic, a lack of prosocial activities, struggling economies, and health workforce shortages. School psychologists (SPs) are well-equipped to address students’ mental health needs; however, the ratio of SPs to students in Colorado’s rural communities is 1:2,128, over four times the professional recommendation. Rural-specific SP training has been historically limited by vast geographic distances between higher education institutions and rural communities as well as a scarcity of rural SPs to serve as supervisors for trainees. Our team secured $4M in federal and state funding to implement an innovative partnership strategy for strengthening rural SBMH capacity. We describe how infrastructural partnerships (i.e., partnerships with funders, state organizations, professional leaders, and rural hiring managers) set the stage for family-school-community (FSC) partnerships (i.e., partnerships with rural SPs, schools, families, and community mental health organizations). Infrastructural partnerships enabled us to overcome systemic barriers to training SPs who live and work in rural settings, paving the way for a culturally sustaining training approach that leverages FSC partnerships to expand rural SBMH capacity.</jats:p>