Following first year of behavioral healthcare pilot program for Copper Mountain workers, spearheading organizations consider returning for a second season
Jessica SachsFollow
jsachs@summitdaily.com
Last December, Copper Mountain Resort and Elevated Community Health introduced free behavioral health services for all Copper Mountain volunteers and employees through a work-based care center located at the EDGE, the mountain’s employee housing facility.
Now, as August creeps closer and Summit County’s ski areas begin to make plans for the upcoming winter season, Copper Mountain and Elevated Community Health are looking to keep the program alive for another season.
Meeting mountain employees where they’re at
The idea for a behavioral health center for Copper Mountain workers originally came from seeing a need within the county’s overall population.
“Community-wide, we have higher rates of mental health issues,” said Marisa Soltis, Elevated Community Health’s behavioral health service line director. “Depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance use disorders — that’s across the county, so that affects everyone, including our ski workers.”
These problems, she said, could be exacerbated by the often-transient lifestyles of ski industry employees.
“There’s a lot of people in the resort community that are moving from a different location, and so they don’t have any familial supports here. A lot of them are new to the community and finding their way. Sometimes it’s their first time living in a new place.” Solis said. “It’s hard to acclimate into a new community. … Some people are moving away from where they live because of other things like past traumas that have happened, and so they might end up in Summit County already with things that they need help with.”
The behavioral health center was designed to fit into the everyday lives of Copper’s employees. Last year, services were available from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., providing “care you can access on your lunch break or right after a shift,” according to Elevate Community Health’s webpage.
“We often had same-day appointments, so if someone needed help that day, they could typically schedule an appointment,” said Sarah Dayton, Elevate Community Health’s strategic funding director. “During the ski season, we rotated between one to two days a week based upon need and how busy the services were needed.”
The behavioral health center’s location inside the housing unit for Copper’s employees, helped to mitigate the transportation barriers that can discourage mountain employees from seeking care.
“Many of them don’t have cars, and especially up at Copper, a lot of those staff members are encouraged to not have a car just due to lack of parking,” Dayton said. “Because of that, it really decreases their ability to access healthcare services because they need to fit it into their work schedule and take time off, as well as prioritize it. Making services right by them decreases so many of those barriers and allows it just to be immediately accessible, which is really the goal of why we are working with Copper to have his work-based health center.”
Outside of transportation and timing barriers, the program also aimed to mitigate barriers faced by the uninsured.
“With so many of our residents lacking health insurance, it just really prevents a lot of people from actually accessing healthcare services,” Dayton said. “When it comes to mental health, there’s a lot that can be done to help people work through things that they’re experiencing through life. Without having someone help them work through that through therapy and other options, it can often lead — for some people — to risk of suicide. We just want to prevent that.”
Although Copper Mountain does offer plans for health, dental and vision insurance to its employees, the vast majority of patients served last year by the behavioral health center were uninsured.
“In this last year, we provided care through behavioral health services to 37 Copper employees, and of those 37, only seven of them actually have health insurance,” Dayton said. “So 30 of those employees had no health insurance.”
Later this year, the ski area will be improving their insurance offerings for part-time and first-year full-time employees.
“We’re actually launching an insurance plan that all employees are able to join as of September 1,” said Kelly Renoux, Copper Mountain’s director of employee experience. “We offer very rich benefits for returning seasonals and our 10-to-12-month staff, and we’re actually adding an extra layer of benefits this year that’ll be for everybody else
Still, some members of the Copper Mountain community, like volunteers, will not be covered even under the new insurance changes. That’s where the behavioral health center can come into play.
“There’s no threshold on part-time, full-time, volunteer. There’s no limit on who can receive services as long as you fall within one of those categories,” Dayton said. “Copper gives us a list of all those people. When a patient calls trying to get scheduled on that specific calendar, our front desk representative just confirms that they’re on Copper’s list of staff or volunteers, and we’re able to schedule them.”
Looking forward to the 2026-2027 season
Elevated Community Health says that, in its first season, the behavioral health program was well-received by Copper Mountain’s workforce.
“We definitely had really positive feedback from the employees at Copper,” said Zach Ryan, the organization’s community engagement manager. “Just that that was a wellness benefit that Copper was supporting, that they were able to access behavioral health services without any major barriers, without having to leave their worksite or without having to leave their homebase.”
The program was funded in its entirety last year by Copper Mountain, and the ski area is currently in communications with Elevated Community Health about continuing to offer these services during the upcoming 2026-2027 winter season.
“We intentionally looked at it as a pilot program to see … if it’d be utilized, how it would go, how it would be taken by staff, if it’d be something that be viewed positively,” Dayton explained. “Now that we have that, we do want to make it a more permanent, ongoing program. We’re just now working with Copper to figure out what that looks like for an ongoing contracting basis for this program, shifting out of that pilot year into more of a permanent structure.”
While there are no solid plans for expanding similar work-based healthcare pilots to other nearby ski areas this season, Ryan said that many of Summit County’s resorts work with Elevated Community Health to provide low-barrier options for care.
“All the resorts are making strong efforts to bring these type of services to their employees,” he said. “We work closely with Vail in terms of being on their employee assistance program. We also work closely with Arapaho Basin, we attend all of their new employee orientations to chat directly with all the employees, so all the employees know exactly where and how they can access re
As for the existing Copper Mountain program, Elevated Community Health and the resort have been looking at potential changes based on observations made last season.
Ryan said that Elevated Community Health is “exploring if there’s a possibility to expand (offerings) to our medical services and dental services,” while Renoux said that changes could be made to simplify scheduling appointments and better match employees schedules.
“We’re looking at days of the week,” Renoux said. “That was part of the feedback of just what days work best with people with the resort schedule, and then we’re actually trying to figure out some simple ways to schedule using QR codes.”
Both organizations say that, small changes aside, they’re in support of continuing to work together to offer behavioral health services during the upcoming season.
“We learned a lot last year, so we’ll probably tweak the program a bit,” Renoux said. “But our intent and plan is to continue to have an onsite presence here in our employee building, the EDGE, for next year.”
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