Kat Jewell is Advocating for Mental Health in Forsyth County
Kat Jewell is a transgender candidate running for the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners to represent district four.
Jewell was working in tech and saw her friends and community members around her struggling: struggling to keep up with inflation, maintain financial stability, find housing, and deal with mental health issues. She was complaining to her mom about the state of her community when her mom told her to do something about it.
“When I got done complaining, she told me to stop sitting on my butt and to get up do something about it and put my money where my mouth was,” she told Georgia Voice. “So, I took two years out of everything professionally and spent the time volunteering and [eventually] getting into politics.”
As part of her volunteering and community organizing, Jewell lobbied the current Board of Commissioners to focus their attention on the mental health care needs in the community. Mental health has been at the forefront of discussions in Forsyth County as the commissioners considered a $38 million project to build a local mental health center earlier this year. The commissioners were originally scheduled to vote on funding construction on the project but ultimately decided to form a task force to find solutions and determine the fate of the building. The Mental Health Advisory Committee includes commissioners Kerry Hill and Todd Levent, County Manager David McKee, representatives of the Forsyth County School Board, Schools Superintendent Jeff Bearden, and Sheriff Ron Freeman.
Jewell believes that it was due in part to her lobbying and advocacy that this task force was formed, and she will continue to focus on addressing Forsyth’s mental health concerns if elected to the board. According to Cindy Levi, the CEO of mental health care facility Avita Community Partners, there were 3,377 mental health crisis calls in the county from 2021 to 2023, and 1,560 required a dispatch. Of the 1,026 patients referred to crisis beds, only about half received their recommended treatment due to a lack of resources and a limit on services able to be offered.
“If that level [of care] is needed, the closest units are in Gainesville, Lawrenceville, Marietta, and Decatur,” Levi said at a
February commissioners meeting. “So that can take the units out of services for several hours in a round trip transporting individuals to those locations.”
Jewell echoed these sentiments and is dedicated to making mental health and crisis support more accessible to the people in her community. She also hopes to increase the representation of mental health professionals on the newly formed Mental Health Advisory Committee, as she says only the sheriff has any experience with handling mental health crises.
Forsyth is not known as a beacon for equality; the county is infamous for the 1912 lynching of Rob Edwards and forcing Black residents to migrate away from the area. Jewell says her identity as a trans woman makes her and others like her vulnerable – and while that made her emotional during our conversation, it’s not going to keep her from fighting for what she knows is right.
“I live in a place where it’s going to be very hard for me to win,” she said. “I can’t win on my gender identity, quite the contrary: that’s a detriment to me. Everybody in the Democratic party’s like, ‘Kat, do you feel safe?’ I grew up in Detroit. You think anybody scares me? No. I have to worry about the other trans people in my community I now represent… [Transphobic people] view us as something that is a threat to their way of life, rather than seeing their neighbor or a part of their community.”
Along with addressing mental health issues and giving visibility and power to other trans people in the county, Jewell also plans to introduce creative solutions to address housing inequalities, as the current median home price in Forsyth County is $675,000. She hopes to try to make housing more affordable through tiny home development.
“I come to the table with unique solutions and a penchant for listening in balance with proper planning. I’m hoping that I can do some good in my community,” Jewell said. “Whether I win or lose, it’s not gonna stop me.”
The general primary election for the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners is on May 21 before the general election on November 5. To support Kat Jewell, you can sign up to volunteer for her campaign at kat4forsyth. com/volunteer or you can reach out to her directly at kat4forsyth@gmail.com.