RBHI was founded to fulfill the vision of a rural America in which all who need mental health care receive it. The RBHI Founders, Staff, and Board Members have spent most of their careers focused on major public health problems, with an emphasis on bolstering care for underserved populations, such as those living in rural regions lacking sufficient health care and those living with mental illness. In 2014, Montana State University established a new research center of excellence to address mental health inequities in Montana. From 2015 to 2020, the Center directed the research of leading suicide prevention interventions for youth and adults. Guided by a team of experts, a major effort succeeded at creating the most effective fully automated, internet-based depression treatment to date, dramatically advancing the potential to treat a key suicide risk factor. Its leadership also built productive partnerships with Extension Agents and Tribal Nations to further the reach of promising and evidence-based interventions. While an Associate Professor working on suicide prevention research (YAM, Thrive, and the Good Behavior Game) at the Center (2016-2018), Janet Lindow, PhD, realized the critical gap between research breakthroughs in mental health programming and the uptake of these advances in communities, especially in rural regions. In 2020, she co-founded RBHI with Julie Anderson and Bill Bryan to facilitate the dissemination and sustainability of leading, evidence-based, digital mental health screening tools and interventions (called “digital mental health care”) in rural communities to prevent suicide among youth.