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Grant funds mental health services Researchers catalog WWII shipwrecks

BCBS gives $1.54 million to fund behavioral health program between ECU and ECSU

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina awarded $1.54 million to ECU to provide telepsychiatry services over the next five years for students at Elizabeth City State University. This partnership expands behavioral health care services at ECSU at a time when mental health concerns on college campuses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are surging.

An estimated 1 in 4 Americans ages 18 and older has a mental disorder in any one year. The challenges associated with attending college, such as academic pressure, can trigger symptoms or cause the onset of behavioral health and substance use problems in students. Higher education institutions are uniquely positioned to provide behavioral health support for students alongside physical health, academic, professional and social services.

“Through collaborative efforts with partners like ECU and ECSU, we’re able to expand quality behavioral health care services across the state,” said Dr. Nora Dennis, lead medical director of behavioral health and health equity at Blue Cross NC.

The investment from Blue Cross NC bolsters the ECU-led North Carolina Statewide Telepsychiatry Program, which connects patients in hospital emergency departments and community-based settings with expert psychiatric care using telehealth technology. NC-STeP enhances access to behavioral health care, especially in North Carolina’s rural communities, such as Pasquotank County, where ECSU is. Telepsychiatry helps address the shortage of providers for patients who otherwise may

Dr. Sy Saeed, director of the ECU Center for Telepsychiatry, speaks over a telemedicine link with Diamond Rawlinson, Ms. Elizabeth City State University, to demonstrate how a typical telepsychiatry visit works between patient and provider.

not have access to services, all while reducing unnecessary hospital admissions and improving after-care and patient outcomes.

“With this investment from Blue Cross NC, ECU will embed a behavioral health provider, linked via telepsychiatry to a clinical psychiatrist, for case consultations and care planning at the Student Health Center at ECSU,” said Dr. Sy Saeed, director of the ECU Center for Telepsychiatry and founding executive director of NC-STeP. “This resource will benefit students by improving access to behavioral health care, reducing the need for trips to the emergency department and inpatient admissions and reducing delays in diagnosis.”

“Students need a place to share things that upset, frighten, confuse or thrill them, and these added telepsychiatry services will help us support more students directly on campus,” said Gary Brown, vice chancellor for student affairs at ECSU, which oversees the Student Health Center. “These funds will allow ECSU to expand our nurse practitioner coverage on campus from 24 to 32 hours, and NC-STeP will augment the traditional models of professional counseling and preventive services we provide to students adjusting to the demands of college life.”

– Spaine Stephens

The E.M. Clark is one of 44 merchant vessels included in the Battle of the Atlantic report. Right, researchers documented each site using a variety of techniques, including manual measurements, photography and videography, and sonar and laser scanning.

Decadelong project documents WWII wrecks off N.C. coast

A project involving the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has identified, surveyed and documented the location and condition of more than 50 wrecks associated with Germany’s effort to disrupt Allied supply lines during World War II .

ECU faculty, staff, students and alumni have played key roles in the project, which led to the government publication in November of Battle of the Atlantic: A Catalog of Shipwrecks off North Carolina’s Coast from the Second World War . Eight of the 10 authors are connected to ECU .

Interest in the project began with German U-boats, said Nathan Richards, director of maritime studies at ECU . Three have been identified off the N .C . coast in the years since WWII, he said .

Around 2008, there was a report someone was seeking to retrieve material from one of the wrecks, which was a problem due to issues of jurisdiction and the possibility of disturbing human remains .

“So in 2008 there was a collaboration to record a baseline,” Richards said . “When we refer to a baseline, we’re going to go out as archaeologists to record a site, and then we can measure changes of the site through time . … And that kind of opened the door to the consideration of this resource and of the untold story of the Battle of the Atlantic off North Carolina . ”

From the coast to about halfway to Bermuda, approximately 90 vessels are known to have been lost in the war, said Joe Hoyt ’04 ’08, lead author of the study and national coordinator of the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries’ Maritime Heritage Program . “For this study, we primarily focused on sites that we believed from the historic record would have been on the continental shelf … before it drops off into much, much deeper water . ”

Documented in the report are 44 merchant vessels, seven Allied warships and support vessels, and four German military vessels . Some had been located and identified since the war .

One notable discovery was that of the freighter Bluefields .

“In July 1942, the U-576 attacked a convoy of 19 ships off Cape Hatteras and struck three of them,” Hoyt said . “One sunk immediately … but when it did this, the U-boat popped to the surface in the middle of the convoy in broad daylight, and it was attacked and sunk . ”

The researchers obtained an American Battlefield Protection Program grant to search for the Bluefields and U-576, and John Bright ’08 ’12 did his master’s thesis on the project . In 2014, the team found the remains of the vessels 240 yards apart in 700 feet of water, 35 miles offshore .

In August 2016, researchers visited the underwater battlefield using two manned submersibles, becoming the first people to lay eyes on the vessels since the day they sank .

– Jules Norwood