Mental Health

Inuka Hero is a digital chat based coaching product which aims to connect people living with common mental disorders ("CMD"s) in low resource settings to trained coaches (Heroes) who provide support via a mobile interface (e.g. tablet, smartphone). The support provided by the Heroes is based on the Friendship Bench intervention developed by Dixon Chibanda and team at the University of Zimbabwe through funding from Grand Challenges Canada.

CASITA is an evidence-based, culturally-specific, early intervention delivered by community health workers (CHWs) in Lima, Peru. With support from Grand Challenges Canada (GCC), the CASITA intervention pilot successfully demonstrated that this low-cost, community-based strategy improves neurodevelopment among children ages 6-24 months.

Violence leaves a legacy of poverty and psychological trauma [1,2]. Children who experienced violence during early childhood lag in cognitive and socioemotional development, while victimized mothers are likely to neglect their children [3,4]. Protecting children from effects of violence, toxic stress, and deficits in maternal care is a key challenge in contexts of violence and humanitarian crises. We will implement and evaluate a group-based psychosocial program for victimized mothers with children 0 to 5 in Colombia, a country devastated by violence.

Northern Uganda has both high fertility and high maternal deaths. Delays in seeking, accessing, and receiving care increase maternal mortality, especially in conflict-affected settings. Poor recognition of pregnancy and labor danger signs by community health workers (CHW) impedes women’s access to healthcare. Transport is a barrier to access and to effective supervision and referral.Lack of trust between CHW and health workers increases delays in receiving care.

Lead exposure is a major global public health problem, especially in low-income countries where nearly 40% of children suffer (1). As a potent neurotoxin, lead irreversibly damages the brain, permanently lowers IQ and reduces lifetime earnings (2). Our proposed district-wide prevention effort will examine and test ways to comprehensively reduce lead in Bangladesh from three major sources: batteries, paint, and adulterated turmeric. We will make the invisible problem of lead contamination visible by engaging stakeholders in a process of publicly identifying and eliminating lead hotspots.

Bangladesh is one of the top ten countries with high adolescent pregnancy in the world. The median age of first birth is 18.2 to 19.4 yrs in urban Bangladesh. The poor urban people, especially young mothers have little access to government health facilities. Provision of health services and health education to this population is a great challenge because of supply and demand barriers in the urban health system, which is considered patchy and fragmented.

Early Child Development (ECD) activities [1-5] and conditional cash transfer [6] improve children’s abilities. However, though unconditional cash transfer (UCT) improves child health[7] and nutrition[8], little is known about the effect of UCT along with health and ECD programs on children’s cognition and behavior. Ministry of Women & Children Affair (MoWCA), the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) is conducting a UCT program for poor rural pregnant women with health education covering a 2-years period.

This innovation helps to improve mental health literacy, functioning and increase the accessibility of mental health treatment by establishing schools as hubs of mental health knowledge and support for youth. Teachers from participating schools are trained to deliver a mental health literacy curriculum (MHLC) that addresses topics including mental disorders and addictions, stigma, stress, coping, problem-solving, help-seeking and mental wellness. The intervention teachers are also trained to teach other teachers the same skillset.

Opportunities for cognitive development are unavailable to most children in India. Government programmes for children favour cure and prevention over promotive care, are not directed towards improving cognitive development, and have hinged entirely on the mother as the primary recipient of information and action. Evidence from programmes underline the importance of paternal involvement in child development in the early stages, there is little evidence on its effect in India.

The proposed innovation will provide 500 teenage girls who are pregnant and/or nursing children between the ages 0-3 years living in Mukuru Slum of Nairobi with knowledge and skills to promote their children’s brain and overall development. This will be achieved using a three-pronged approach incorporating the scientific, social and economic interventions. In addition, the project will utilise an Early Childhood Development (ECD) framework that will take teenage mothers through a process of: ECD Awareness, knowledge Acquisition, Action, Accountability, Assessment and Access to services.