Meeting People Where They Are

Spotlight on Eran Magen, PhD, founder and CEO of Circles of Support & Early Alert

Most mental health tools wait for people to come to them. Someone has to remember the app exists, open it, and decide to complete a screening, usually at the exact moment they feel least like doing any of it. Early Alert flips that model. Instead of waiting, it reaches out first.

A weekly text that opens a door

Early Alert is a suicide and crisis prevention service that checks in with people once a week through quick, discreet text messages. It works with institutions such as hospitals, clinics, colleges and universities, K-12 school districts, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and Veteran Serving Organizations. It is a “Proactive Resource Navigator". When a check-in response suggests someone is struggling, Early Alert responds instantly, including referrals to additional resources. Every response also feeds a real-time wellness dashboard, so institutions can guide their wellness policies on the basis of real-time population data.

Three deliberate choices make the approach work, and each echoes what we believe at TextIt.

First, Early Alert is not an app. If you can use text messaging, you can use Early Alert. There is nothing to install, operate, or update. Reaching people on a channel they already know, with nothing new to download or learn, is the whole reason to build on text in the first place.

Second, Early Alert is proactive. Rather than hoping people find a self screening tool and make time for it, it comes to them, which drives high response rates and a far better chance of reaching someone early, before a difficult moment becomes a crisis. A message that actually gets read and answered is the hardest part of any outreach to get right, and it happens to be exactly what text messaging & TextIt do best.

Third, Early Alert is reactive and intuitive. Its check-ins and instant responses are built and automated in TextIt's flow builder. When a user response calls for support, the right resources arrive without delay. Just as important, the automation never works alone. The right real people are always in the loop, from an institution's own support staff to Early Alert’s 24/7 live crisis counselors, ready to step in the moment a situation calls for human support.

See a check-in for yourself

The best way to understand Early Alert is to experience it. You can try a demo check-in exactly as a subscriber would, and you can explore the real-time wellness dashboard demo to see how those individual responses come together for the institutions Early Alert serves.

The image above is an example of the messages you might receive in the demo, similar to what an Early Alert user would receive.

A demo messaging bot is just one example of what can be built using TextIt's flow builder.

Reaching Veterans and students across the country

Today, Early Alert supports professional students at more than 30 universities, including medical, law, pharmacy, and nursing students, along with over 13,000 Veterans nationwide through work funded by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. In every one of these programs, the same simple pattern holds: an individual weekly check-in, and an instant, personalized path to help when someone needs it. Seems simple, but it works.

Institutions are taking notice. The FSU College of Medicine adopted Early Alert to support student mental health, and Northwest University's School of PA Medicine joined a growing list of schools doing the same. Early Alert's work with Veterans has also been part of a wider conversation about the power of connection in preventing Veteran suicide.

"The best decision we ever made"

Nearly all of Early Alert's communication with subscribers is choreographed through TextIt flows and campaigns, which means the weekly check-ins, the instant referrals, and even real-time crisis intervention run automatically.

That reliability matters most in the one place Early Alert cares about above all: whether a message actually gets read and answered. Reaching people over SMS, where response rates stay high, is central to catching distress early, and strong SMS response rates are exactly what we work hard to support at TextIt.

Asked what he would tell another organization considering TextIt, Eran put it simply:

"I cannot recommend TextIt highly enough. The platform, while intuitive, has incredible depth and can meet very sophisticated needs. What really makes TextIt shine is the incredible support that the TextIt team offers. It is consistently friendly, professional, and helpful. Choosing TextIt as our texting platform was the best decision we ever made."

Early Alert is proof of what happens when you reach out first, keep it human, and make help immediate. We are proud that TextIt gets to support these types of projects from behind the scenes.

To see it for yourself, try a check-in or learn more at EarlyAlert.me