(Radio Iowa) – A health insurance company is investing millions of dollars in mental tele-health services in Iowa’s K-12 public schools. The Cedar Rapids Community School District received one-and-a-half million dollars this week from Minnesota-based insurer UnitedHealth Group. Superintendent Tawana Grover says the money will help pay for an online tele-health portal that students can use to access mental health counseling.

“It’s one thing to check in,” Grover says. “It’s another thing to spend 30 minutes or an hour with someone that is solely focused on your needs, what you need, what you’re dealing with, and helping to not only listen, but to provide you with strategies that you can use whenever you go beyond the session.” The provider is Hazel Health, which focuses on school-based care. Brian Masterson, UnitedHealth’s senior behavioral health medical director, says starting in the schools could prevent longer term, more acute behavioral issues.

“We’ve been contemplating this for a few years, working with how do you address the mental health crisis in in our society, but also how to address that by working through it so you start an earlier time period,” Masterson says. “So in schools and those types of things, is an opportunity to teach people about the constructs of mental well-being.” UnitedHealth says it aims to provide the resources to historically under-served and rural communities. In the end, the program goal is to impact 100-thousand students.

As of Wednesday, it has funded the creation of two such programs in Des Moines and Council Bluffs. No rural programs have been announced.