USDA MRCS Smyth Campus Expansion for Crisis Care

Mount Rogers Community Services (MRCS) provides behavioral health care to a rural region of southwest Virginia including Bland, Carroll, Grayson, Smyth, and Wythe Counties and the City of Galax. MRCS has received USDA Emergency Rural Health Care grant funding to expand and optimize their Smyth County mental health campus. The expansion will double the number of beds in the Rhea B. Lawrence (RBL) Recovery Center from eight to 16; add a Crisis Care Center on the same campus; offer a full array of outpatient services for referral; and provide individuals in care with healthy physical outlets.

A team of VT faculty and graduate students will evaluate health outcomes (Mary Beth Dunkenberger, Lara Nagle, Laura York, Liz Allen, and Paul Delaughter, VTIPG), the construction process (Dr. Andrew McCoy and Dr. Xinghua Gao, Myers-Lawson School of Construction), health economics (Dr. Rachel Silverman, Center for Biostatistics and Health Data Science), the partnership network (Dr. David Moore, VTIPG), and the trauma-informed design components (Dr. Elif Tural, School of Design).