2024: IMPACT: Implementation of a multisectoral programme to improve indigenous adolescent mental health in Brazil and Dominica – Prof Simon Anderson

The Latin American and Caribbean region is home to ~55 million Indigenous people who experience high levels of poverty due to historic structural discrimination. An urgent concern is the higher rates of mental health problems among Indigenous compared with non-Indigenous people, including higher rates of substance use and suicide among adolescents. There is a pressing need for culturally responsive mental health programmes for Indigenous adolescents' mental health and for an understanding of how contexts shape programme implementation processes.

The aim of this study is to work in partnership with trained Indigenous people from their communities, to implement and evaluate a culturally adapted evidence-based multisectoral programme (Indigenous leaders requested the word 'intervention' be replaced with 'programme' as 'intervention' was felt to have an authoritarian emphasis) to improve Indigenous adolescent (10-18 years) mental health in Brazil and Dominica.

Investigators: Paola Dazzan, Divya Parmar, Jamie Murdoch, Ieda Vargas (Co-Principal Investigator), Paulo de Tarso Coelho Jardim, Maria Godoy, Antonio Jose Grande, Vanessa Iribarrem Avena Miranda, Cristiane Damiani Tomasi, Rodrigo Affonseca Bressan, Roger C Gibson, Abdullahi Abdulkadri, Rosana Emmanuel, Iracema Gãh Té Nascimento

Sponsor: Medical Research Council (MRC), UKRI

Overseas Collaborating Institutions: Kings College London, UK; Federal University of Juiz de Fora; State University of Mato Grosso Do Sul; University of The Extreme South of Santa Catarina; Federal University of Sao Paulo and Federal University of Rio Grande Sul, Fadepe, Brazil