The Government of Canada and partners establish a Canada-wide network to support integrated mental health and substance use services for youth

“Young people have always faced challenges as they deal with the changes in their lives. Over the past years, their mental health and substance use challenges have been exacerbated by the stresses and social disruption of the pandemic. Integrated Youth Services is a proven model that can lead to improved health outcomes. By supporting IYS-Net in its objective to bring together diverse services and perspectives from youth, care providers, partners, researchers, and people with lived and living experience will we ensure that all youth have the opportunity to receive the integrated care that they need to thrive, grow, and succeed.”

The Honourable Carolyn Bennett
Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health

“Ontario has always been a strong advocate for Integrated Youth Services. The IYS model plays a key role in our $3.8 billion, 10-year Roadmap to Wellness by lowering barriers of access and providing upstream investments that create safe spaces for young Ontarians. By connecting our 22 Hubs to other Integrated Youth Service providers across the country we are proud to contribute to IYS-Net’s shared data infrastructure, aiding researchers and policy makers in making informed decisions on how we can ensure that our children and youth will grow into healthy adults”.

The Honourable Michael A Tibollo
Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions

“It has taken a decade of collaboration and partnerships to get here, building on the amazing foundation of ACCESS Open Minds, Foundry, Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario and Aire ouverte. CIHR’s IYS-Net will bring together all 13 provinces and territories to help create the first ever pan-Canadian learning health system, using research, data and the living experiences of youth themselves, to transform access to evidence-informed, integrated services for all youth in Canada. The goal is that, when completed, not a single youth between the age of twelve and twenty-five will be left without access to the health and social services they need the most. Youth will determine their own healthy future, by being at the center of it.”

Dr. Samuel Weiss
Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health, and Addiction

“Integrated Youth Services (IYS) are leading the way in providing Canadian youth with easily accessible, culturally relevant mental health services. With our partners the Bell-GBF Partnership and RBC Future Launch, we are delighted to support the IYS-Net initiative, which is aimed at ensuring that IYS achieves its full potential for equitable access and outcomes for young people and their families. IYS-Net takes a ‘learning health system’ approach, using data and lived experience to generate and mobilize knowledge for more effective youth services. This approach holds great promise for improving the quality of youth mental health services across the country.”

Ian Boeckh
President, Graham Boeckh Foundation

“The Indigenous Network within IYS-Net builds upon significant efforts by ACCESS Open Minds and in particular its Indigenous Council and allows important growth in relationships and collaborations with Indigenous and IYS partners throughout Canada. It provides an opportunity to continue developing and supporting community-driven, culturally appropriate, and timely mental health supports for Indigenous young people.”

Dr. Christopher Mushquash
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Mental Health and Addiction, Lakehead University

“Building on a collaboration involving the Ministry of Health and Social Services, youth, families, carers, service providers, community organizations and researchers from across Quebec, IYS-Net will strengthen collaborations and networking around Aire ouverte, Québec’s network of integrated youth services (IYS). I am delighted that Aire ouverte, that targets 12 to 25 year olds, aims to improve access to youth-friendly services, particularly for vulnerable and traditionally underserved groups. In this, Aire ouverte is like the pan-Canadian ACCESS Open Minds youth mental health network, CIHR’s first Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research initiative launched in 2014. It is inspiring that Canadian youth mental health is now achieving critical mass and synergies through IYS-Net, which unites all provincial IYS and the Indigenous network.”

Srividya N. Iyer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University
Researcher, Douglas Research Centre

“We know a quarter of youth in Canada are affected by mental health and/or substance use concerns. We believe that Canadian youth deserve easy access to community supports for these concerns. This funding from CIHR presents an opportunity to work with partner organizations from across Canada to develop a Learning Health System that will improve the lives of young people in British Columbia and beyond. On behalf of everyone at Foundry, we are incredibly grateful to the federal government for their investment in Integrated Youth Services in Canada, and for the ongoing support of the Government of BC, Providence Healthcare, St Paul’s Foundation and the University of British Columbia.  We also acknowledge that this good work would not be possible without the commitment of young people and caregivers working to improve our health care system.

We share in this excitement with our IYS partners across Canada. Together, we are transforming and continuously improving health and wellness outcomes for young people and families/caregivers across Canada.”

Dr. Steve Mathias, Executive Director and Dr. Skye Barbic, Head Scientist
Foundry

“Youth and their families deserve access to high quality services that are co-designed with youth and families, and lead to positive and equitable outcomes for youth throughout Canada.  IYS-Net will allow us to develop new and inclusive approaches to support youth effectively. The partnerships across government and philanthropy that have made these investments possible demonstrate a shared recognition of the critical importance of supporting youth to succeed and thrive. Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario is grateful for the vision of these partners and their commitment to youth and families.”

Dr. Jo Henderson
Executive Director, Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario (YWHO) and Director, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Margaret and Wallace McCain Centre for Child, Youth and Family Mental Health

“The IYS National Data Framework and Infrastructure project is the first step in establishing a nationwide secure and scalable platform that will enable the real-time exchange of mental health data and accelerate knowledge sharing in a pan-Canadian learning health system for youth mental health”.

Dr. Sean Hill
Director, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics

• What makes Foundry different: Integrated Youth Services (IYS) 101
• IYS is often referred to as a guiding set of principles for delivering care to youth, typically in the age range of 12 to 25 years.
• IYS often include such services as:
  • mental health services
  • substance use counselling
  • primary care
  • peer and family support services
  • sexual health services
  • work and study supports
  • assistance navigating the health care system
  • housing and other social community services
  • traditional Indigenous healing and cultural practices
• IYS-Net is being developed through a partnership between CIHR, the Graham Boeckh Foundation, the Bell-GBF Partnership, and the RBC Foundation through RBC Future Launch, with new partners to be brought on board as IYS-Net evolves.
• The three most established provincial networks for IYS will receive this initial funding of $1 million: Foundry (British Columbia), Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario (Ontario), and Aire ouverte (Quebec), as well as an Indigenous Network drawn from ACCESS Open Minds sites in First Nation and Inuit communities where research and service delivery is guided by a well-established Indigenous Council.

Related products

• Backgrounder – Government of Canada Support for Integrated Youth Services

Associated links

• National Standards for Integrated Youth Services funding opportunity
• National Standards for Integrated Youth Services funding decision
• The Integrated Youth Services Network of Networks (IYS-Net)
• The Graham Boeckh Foundation
• The Bell-GBF Partnership
• RBC Future Launch
• Foundry
• Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario
• Aire ouverte
• ACCESS Open Minds
• The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

YRAP Interview with Dr. Marchand

YRAP Interview with Dr. Marchand

Written by: Jeanna Pillainayagam, member of Foundry’s Provincial Youth Advisory Committee 

 In May 2021, I had the opportunity to interview two researchers who had met with the Youth Research Advisory Panel (YRAP) to gain feedback on their research grant proposals. I wanted to see what the experience of working with the YRAP was like for them, as well as gain some insight into their perspectives on the importance of collaborating with youth in research. Below are some snippets of my conversation with Dr. Kirsten Marchand. 

*Please note that I have lightly edited Dr. Marchand’s responses for the sake of clarity.  

  

Jeanna: How did you hear about the YRAP? 

Dr. Marchand: At the end of October, I started a postdoctoral research fellowship position at Foundry, [which is] jointly sponsored also by UBC. … Within the first month of getting myself oriented, I got the chance to hear through our regular research team meetings about the YRAP … and just thought, ‘What an incredible idea!” All of my research in the past has been with populations that … some people would define as ‘underserved’ or ‘marginalized’. I use the air quotes, those are not my words. I’ve always been worried as a researcher and curious about how we can find more ways to involve people whose lives we’re studying and trying to support and help. And to try to find ways to better involve them in the research process. I stand behind the idea that obviously that can lead to a better final product, [which would be] a proposal to identify research questions that are more relevant and important to [the] people whose lives we’re trying to improve upon or to support. …  

  

Jeanna: What made you want to approach the YRAP for feedback on your grant proposal?  

Dr. Marchand: So there’s a couple of things. First … it aligns with my values as a researcher. And I’m in this stage now where as a postdoc, I am making the transition between being a student and focusing a lot on understanding the methods and the data, and all that stuff that you learn as a PhD student, to now making that jump towards becoming an independent research scientist. And so it really just aligns with my values and this was a great opportunity for me to have the chance to actually do work that is informed by or supported by conversations with young people. The other major reason for me is that all of my work previously has been with adult populations, and so I felt like this would be a … miniscule opportunity to ensure that … the way I was writing or the way I was thinking about these problems wasn’t just coming from the literature, but also that I had an opportunity to talk about it a little bit with a group of young people. Now I don’t think that my work stops there by any means … hopefully if this work gets funded, [it] will be an ongoing process where I’ll get to engage more with young people and have young people working alongside me so I can learn and do really good research. …  

  

Jeanna: What were some of your key learnings from your experience working with the YRAP? 

Dr. Marchand: I think one of the key learnings that I really took away was to not underestimate the complexity [and] the sensitivity of the topics that I’ve been working on … [T]here were some comments made [by the YRAP about] intersections with gender identity and gender roles … that of course I had thought a little bit about, but not at all I think to the level of complexity that it should have been given. So that was a really important takeaway. As well … a lot of the comments were around some of the inclusion criteria and the procedures that … I didn’t have a ton of space [to write about], so I only had like a page really to write about that stuff [in the grant proposal]. But [there were] a lot of comments as well around recruitment and just to challenge me, I think, in my thinking around traditional research approaches and how they can be very hierarchical and top-down, and how that can actually potentially hinder my ability to reach people who I obviously really want to be able to reach. So I think it was just challenging me to [think a bit more] outside the traditional structures of the university system and academic research, to be a bit more creative. And then just to be [thinking a bit more] completely through the complexity of the questions I want to ask. Which is all, again, at that stage of [the proposal] development, really crucial. But to me that’s going to require more than one meeting, and hopefully longer-term investment … those would be the two takeaways from the meeting. And then again, I think just in terms of my values, it just solidified why it’s so important I think for me to have those opportunities now and in the future to be able to work closely with the people that I’m trying to do research with and for.  

 

 

Jeanna: Do you think there’s a growing desire among researchers in your field to have more youth input in their research? 

Dr. Marchand: I can’t say youth input specifically because this is [a] newish [area] for me now. But … I can say that at least in my work with people who are using substances and experiencing mental health challenges or needs, that there’s definitely a growing movement to encourage researchers from the very beginning to co-design research with people with lived and living experience. And that to me is just an ethical imperative. We’re studying topics that are incredibly sensitive and complicated and require great care in order for the project to be meaningful, for it to be sensitive, for it to do well, and then also for it to actually land and have some impact. And I think that another area for me is that I’ve been frustrated by the fact that we often do research on these topics, and then we just publish the paper, and move on. And it doesn’t lead to any real success aside from [helping] the researcher’s curriculum vitae grow[ ]. So [researchers] get more publications and [researchers] get more success out of it, but especially during research in healthcare on complex topics like opioid use disorder, it is so important I think to involve those stakeholders from the very beginning so that we can then have more of an impactful study that hopefully leads to some kind of systems-related change. …   

  

Jeanna: What would you say are some of the challenges of incorporating youth feedback into research?  

Dr. Marchand: [F]or this application [when] I met with the YRAP, that was for [a specific grant], and for fellowship applications. So they didn’t have a devoted section for knowledge translation, or integrated knowledge translation, or how [the researcher will be] working with young people. They didn’t have a section for that, so then I was stuck to sort of choose what to include and what I could fit. So that root problem comes down to the funder, and if they want us to be doing research that is more engaged research, then they need to create more spaces within our actual applications to speak to how we are doing that, … And give the researchers also more time to do that kind of research, because it takes more time to get together to meet and to account for different perspectives and all of that stuff. And so I would say the root of that challenge comes to the funder, and [on] the flip side, I just recently applied to [another specific grant] with the same application that I met with the YRAP about, but they had more space to actually spell out some of those things. So I was able to then take into account more of the procedures that were suggested from the panel when I met with everybody around different forms of recruitment and engagement, and stuff like that. …  

  

Jeanna: From your viewpoint, what would you say is the significance of a panel like this?  

Dr. Marchand: I feel like so many things, to be honest. So I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to pinpoint it to one thing. I think it just makes you a better researcher. That’s like a super silly-sounding, idealistic way of saying it. But I just think it makes you more accountable, it makes sure that you’re asking questions that make sense to the people that you are eventually going to be asking those questions to. It brings us more together in our world views, in our ways of seeing a problem. And I use that word, “problem”, as in, I’m thinking [of] health systems or like big social problems that we’re facing these days. So it makes you just think about it in a way that makes sense to everybody, not just from your office, university, and campus, … So I think it just makes you a better researcher. It means you’re going to ask questions, you’re going to be thinking it through in a different way. More complex problems require very complex ideas and solutions, and so we want to have as many diverse perspectives at the table, in my opinion, to make a project successful, and to hopefully lead to some kind of change. … [B]ut then I also see that there’s probably, or hopefully, some benefits to young people and to families who might be able to be engaged in this as well. So getting the chances to have your voices heard, and from the very beginning, and maybe hopefully learning some new skills along the way. …  

  

Jeanna: Do you see this type of panel being adopted in other fields of research, or even other parts of the world? Do you see this kind of model being replicated? 

Dr. Marchand: I think it could be, for sure. It seems to me, from my very naive one-time visit, especially now in this new world where we’re so accustomed to working virtually, why could it not? Maybe the better question is what are the stop gaps? … there needs to be a bit of resources and funding to back it up, and that’s where … it needs to come down to the funders. …  

[T]he whole system is set up in a way that it feels like it values this ivory tower research. Like doing research in silos, doing research alone, and it values that researchers get publications. The whole system is set up in this way that it’s around the research scientist, and it’s not around the community that we’re trying to do research to inform solutions [for] better delivery of care to, … [B]ut that can’t happen in silos, and it shouldn’t be about a publication. It should be about policy change or a change in the quality of care.  

To me, it really does come down to the root problem being at the funder. So if funders would put in requirements around this and give researchers the room to do this kind of research, [through] time and resources, then I can’t see what the problem would be. I think maybe the questions we need to be asking ourselves more is how can we not? And why are we not doing this? Why is this not a standard practice, [when] doing research on and about especially sensitive topics? So I feel like yeah, it could be replicated for sure.

 

About Jeanna Pillainayagam 

Jeanna Pillainayagam is currently a member of the Foundry Provincial Youth Advisory Committee, and was a member of the Youth Research Advisory Panel (YRAP). She also has volunteer experience with mental health organizations including CMHA-BC and Jack.org, and has previously worked on mental health projects with groups such as Anxiety Canada, the University of Northern British Columbia, and the BC School Counsellors Association. She is passionate about promoting mental health education and destigmatizing mental illness.

Jeanna believes the YRAP was an excellent opportunity for young people to advocate for the needs of youth in terms of creating accessible, adequate, and appropriate health/wellness services. She hopes to see more programs like the YRAP in the future. To read more articles written by Jeanna Pillainayagam click here.

 

 

Foundry Sunshine Coast – Coming Soon!

Foundry Sunshine Coast – Coming Soon!

We are proud to announce that a new Foundry centre will be coming to the Sunshine Coast in the future!

Once open, young people and families/caregivers in the Sunshine Coast will have increased access to free and confidential health and wellness supports to fit their unique needs. We’re excited to welcome Foundry Sunshine Coast into our growing network of Foundry centres and continue our mission in supporting youth in living a good life.

Following Fort St. John, Tri-Cities and Kamloops, Foundry Sunshine Coast is the final new centre announcement of Budget 2021.

We are incredibly grateful to Sunshine Coast Community Services – the lead agency for Foundry Sunshine Coast – as well as the Government of BC and community partners across the province for their support in making this possible.

To learn more, read the news release here or visit foundrybc.ca/expansion.

If you have any questions, please email expansion@foundrybc.ca.

Foundry Sea to Sky now offering interim services

Launch of first-ever Canadian youth mental health platform will transform research and treatments

A pioneering youth mental health project will enhance Canada’s overall understanding of youth mental health needs and advance new assessment and treatment approaches. Each year, one of out every four youth in Canada needs mental health services, making an initiative such as this urgent and critical for the well-being of our young people. The “Canadian Youth Mental Health Insight (CYMHI) Platform” powered by RBC Future Launch, will use open data, machine learning and other methods to improve communication between youth and families, researchers, clinicians and other service providers with diverse mental health experiences and specializations.

A specialized research team has been awarded a $5.13-million grant to create this platform to optimize mental health with and for youth across Canada. Generous funding has been provided from RBC Future Launch, Power Corporation of Canada, and the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), an innovative arrangement between the Government of Canada, through Health Canada, and Brain Canada.

Led by Dr. Sean Hill, Director of the Krembil Centre of Neuroinformatics, and Senior Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the team brings together diverse organizations across the country including academic institutions, community-based mental health services, hospitals, and youth and family advisories from Foundry, Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario, and other integrated youth services.

The Insight platform will provide an interactive web portal for youth, family members, clinicians, service providers, researchers, and policy makers to access shared data, analytics, and AI tools for optimizing mental health care. The portal will enable users to find data and connect insights from community and school prevention programs, youth mental health services, and clinical research studies. The portal will also provide access to AI-based services to help users navigate mental health services, personalized tools for monitoring mental health, identifying risks, and recommending services, and an interactive atlas of youth mental health service demand and availability to guide service providers and policymakers.

“Through this project, we are providing a state-of-the-art informatics platform that serves as a foundation to improve mental health for, and importantly, with youth across the country,” notes Hill. “It will facilitate high impact research and the development of youth mental health approaches that would otherwise not be possible.”

“The CYMHI is a fantastic development to empower youth and youth-involved initiatives to take ownership in paving the way for future mental health service implementation,” says Suchayte Bali, Youth Engagement Coordinator at Foundry. “At a grassroots level, this can allow for many youth-led not-for-profit organizations to garner an understanding for which supports are needed in their communities, now backed by machine learning data from across Canada.”

“Right now, 9 out of 10 provinces are funding services with research components, British Columbia can’t learn from New Brunswick, and Ontario is missing evidence from Saskatchewan and so on,” says CYMHI leadership team member Steve Mathias, Executive Director at Providence Health Care and leader of Foundry, a British Columbia network of centres that offer young people health and wellness resources, services and supports both in person and virtually. “It is about bringing everyone together to share and exchange what we are living, and learning.”

Mental illness disproportionately affects young people between the ages of 15 and 29 worldwide. It accounts for approximately half of the overall burden of disease in this age group, making it the leading cause of disability in Canada.

“More than ever, brain research is critical in helping us, as a community, recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate its effects on the brain and our mental health,” says Dr. Viviane Poupon, Brain Canada President, and CEO. “We must invest in projects like these that will lead to concrete impacts on brain health for youth in Canada.”

“The stress, anxiety, depression, and loneliness caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionally impacted the mental health of young people in Canada. With so many children and youth still struggling, it is essential that we accelerate our efforts to ensure that young people have access to appropriate supports when and where they need them,” says The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health. “This ground-breaking mental health platform will continue to improve youth mental health services by listening to youth in order to base our response on a much better understanding of youth priorities, needs and treatment approaches.”

“It’s important to us that youth across Canada have the best opportunities to thrive and reach their fullest potential,” says Mark Beckles, Vice-President, Social Impact and Innovation, RBC. “Through our partnership with Brain Canada, we’re focused on increasing and accelerating access to services for youth who are facing mental health concerns, while facilitating digital solutions for practitioners and researchers.”

“At Power Corporation we recognize how critical it is to strengthen access to mental health services and supports for young Canadians and their families, wherever they live. We are proud to be able to support the Canadian Youth Mental Health Insight (CYMHI) Platform. This advanced digital platform and pan-Canadian partnership between researchers and practitioners promises to fill gaps in support and ultimately enhance the quality of youth mental health care in every region of the country,” says Paul Genest, Senior Vice President, Power Corporation of Canada.

This project was awarded funding through the 2021 open call for applications to the Brain Canada Youth Mental Health Platform, powered by RBC Future Launch, with generous support from Power Corporation of Canada.

Funding for the Brain Canada Youth Mental Health Platform has been made possible by the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), an innovative arrangement between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) and Brain Canada Foundation.

To learn more about this exciting project, visit Brain Canada’s website. 

Foundry PhD research trainee receives prestigious Clyde Hertzman Memorial Fellowship

On August 31, 2022, Katherine (Katie) Hastings, a UBC doctoral student was named the successful recipient of the 2nd annual ‘Society to Cell’ Clyde Hertzman Memorial Fellowship for her research project, “How has the mental health service needs of youth in BC changed since the pandemic: a retrospective analysis using data from a province-wide integrated youth service network“. 

The ‘Society to Cell’ Clyde Hertzman Memorial Fellowship financially supports UBC trainees who are conducting research projects that will enrich our understanding of the impact of social and environmental factors on health and well-being across the life course.  

For Dr. Skye Barbic, Head Scientist at Foundry, this scholarship honours the legacy of Dr. Hertzman – who passed away suddenly in February 2013 – as a world-leading researcher in the social determinants of health, a champion for social justice, and a tireless advocate for youth.  

“We are so proud of Katie’s work to date,” says Dr. Barbic, “and look forward to partnering with her and Dr. Anne Gadermann from the UBC School of Public and Population Health to advance this impactful research and support Katie’s trajectory as a future health service leader, educator, and researcher.  

Learn more about her project below: 

How has the mental health service needs of youth in BC changed since the pandemic: a retrospective analysis using data from a province-wide integrated youth service network 

Canada and many parts of the world are investing in an emerging model of care called Integrated Youth Services (IYS), combining a blend of traditional (psychiatric care, counseling) and non-traditional services (peer support, primary care, and social services) delivered in a singular, accessible and youth-friendly location. This comes at a critical time in which youth are facing unprecedented levels of social isolation and missing important developmental milestones with school closures, quarantine orders, and increased family and individual stress due to the pandemic.  

The overall aim of this study is to understand the impact of integrated youth services (IYS) on access and service utilization patterns among diverse youth in BC, by describing characteristics and predictors of service utilization among youth accessing IYS; comparing temporal trends of service use and mental health outcomes of youth accessing services by IYS sites over time (2018-2022); and comparing overall service utilization patterns (i.e., any mental health-related services accessed in BC) of youth before and after an initial visit at an IYS. 

With widening socioeconomic and health inequities, understanding the impact of Foundry, an IYS established in 2015, and the needs of diverse youth in BC will help inform rapid policy and public health action to address these disparities. 

“Being awarded this fellowship means a lot to me,” says Katie. “Dr. Clyde Hertzman has left a huge legacy in the field of early childhood development and I hope to honor his vision to explore ‘differences that make a difference’ through this work.” 

“We have a unique opportunity to examine the mental health landscape and service needs of youth through the rich data sources available at Foundry. Findings from this study can be used to identify potential gaps in access and services needed to address the increasing mental health burden among youth brought on by the pandemic.” 

Congratulations to Katie on this award! 

 

 

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Clyde Hertzman Memorial Fellowship Award, UBC researcher, Dr. Skye Barbic, Skye Barbic, Foundry BC, Foundry, the Foundry, integrated youth services, foundry counselling, youth mental health, translated mental health services,  kids mental health, free counselling, youth support, teenager mental health support, youth programs, mental health and addictions

Two Foundry teams funded through PHC’s annual Practice-based Research Challenge  

On Aug 23, two Foundry Vancouver-Granville teams were among the 15 successful teams receiving funding through the annual PHC Practice-based Research Challenge, for their research project: Experiences of Indigenous youth accessing mental health care through primary care and psychiatry at two inner-city integrative community health centres. 

The Research Challenge is a competition open to point-of-care PHC staff and offers research teams the opportunity to work with a mentor to develop a research proposal around a research question, where they learn basic research skills and compete with other teams for funding to conduct a small-scale research project.  

Presentations were judged by a panel comprised of scientific and Patient and Family Partner reviewers.  

Winning teams receive up to $5,000 each in research award funding to conduct their research over an 18-month period. 

Learn more about their project below: 

Experiences of Indigenous youth accessing mental health care through primary care and psychiatry at two inner-city integrative community health centres.  

Team members: 

• Janae Dunlop RN 
• Lyn Heinemann OT 
• Emily Leake NP 
• Sarah Cochrane NP 
• Courteney Durand PFP 

Young people aged 15–24 are more likely to experience mental health and/or substance use disorders than any other age group. As a result of the negative impacts of colonization, cultural oppression and historical trauma, Indigenous youth experience a disproportionate burden of mental health and substance use concerns with even more barriers to accessing care than non-Indigenous youth. Primary care and mental health services in urban settings have generally not been adapted to serve the needs of Indigenous young people.  

The aim of this project is to gain an understanding of the experiences of Indigenous youth ages 16-24 years who have accessed mental health care through primary care and psychiatry at two urban health centres. Findings may help service providers optimize the care outcomes and experiences of urban Indigenous youth and directions for future research.  

What is the experience of youth transitioning from Foundry youth services to adult care? 

Team members: 

• Farzana Rayani – Nurse Practitioner 
• Chelsea Stratton – Rehab Assistant
• Ingrid Mayer – Patient Family Partner 
• Danielle O’Callaghan – Patient Partner 

Our research project will look at the experience of youth transitioning from Foundry integrative youth services to adult care, or independence.  Foundry is a community-based youth (age 16-25 years) mental health and substance use clinic. Foundry Services are comprehensive and offer mental health care, substance use services, primary care, social services, and youth and family peer supports. 

Due to this “one stop shop” approach to care, our clinic is heavily involved in many aspects of a client’s life until they turn 25. There is currently no transition pathway or plan in place that Foundry clinicians can use to guide clients through the ageing out process.  

To explore this transition period, we will complete a qualitative research study using interviews and focus groups with former Foundry clients to identify the ways their health, and overall wellbeing has changed since ageing out of Foundry care. Our goal is to use the information gathered and to develop a pathway Foundry can use to better support and prepare our clients as they transition out of our care.   

Foundry Vancouver-Granville is part of the Foundry network, a growing provincial and national network that includes over 200 partnerships. It also serves as one of 12 Foundry centres across BC that provides free and confidential health and wellness services for young people ages 12-24.  

“The Foundry Network is a Learning Health System,” says Dr. Skye Barbic, Head Scientist, Foundry. “The Research Challenge is an opportunity to create, acquire, and transfer new knowledge from one centre and share insights with partner organizations in Vancouver and across the entire Foundry network. 

“The success of these teams shows incredible commitment from service providers at Foundry Vancouver Granville. We are grateful to their commitment to generate and share evidence to improve the outcomes and experience of youth and families.” 

Congratulations to Janae Dunlop, Lyn Heinemann, Emily Leake, Sarah Cochrane, Courteney Durand, Farzana Rayani, Chelsea Stratton, Ingrid Mayer, Danielle O’Callaghan on this award!  

 

 

 

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PHC research challenge, PHC, Providence Health Care, Foundry Vancouver-Granville,  UBC researcher, Dr. Skye Barbic, Skye Barbic, Foundry BC, Foundry, the Foundry, integrated youth services, foundry counselling, youth mental health, translated mental health services,  kids mental health, free counselling, youth support, teenager mental health support, youth programs, mental health and addictions

An Interview with Dr. Sarah Munro

Written by: Jeanna Pillainayagam, member of Foundry’s Provincial Youth Advisory Committee

In early May, I had the opportunity to interview two researchers who had met with the Youth Research Advisory Panel (YRAP) to gain feedback on their research grant proposals. I wanted to see what the experience of working with the YRAP was like for them, as well as gain some insight into their perspectives on the importance of collaborating with youth in research. Below are some snippets of my conversation with Dr. Sarah Munro.  

*Please note that I have lightly edited Dr. Sarah Munro’s responses for the sake of clarity.  

  

Jeanna: How did you hear about the YRAP? 

Dr. Munro: I heard about it when it was being planned. I was invited to be a part of the academic team putting in the grant application that funded the YRAP. It was through a collaboration I was doing with the [Principal Investigator] and it was around youth and healthcare and it seemed like a great synergy. So I first learned about it when it was in its development stage.  

  

Jeanna: What made you want to approach the YRAP for feedback regarding your grant proposal? 

Dr. Munro: Well, I think it’s becoming an expectation of research that involves any populations that access healthcare, that the research needs to be done in some kind of partnership. Those partnerships need to be genuine, they need to be built on trust and collaboration, and starting those partnerships from scratch takes a lot of time. And in my experience, it really takes a year between first making contact and having time to get to know each other, build[ing] that trust before really having a genuine relationship where people’s ideas are incorporated into the research and they actually get to co-produce the research. So the opportunity to connect then with a group that had so much capacity and built-in expertise, that felt to me like a lifeline during a very busy time. We’re all so physically isolated with COVID that the opportunity to do outreach, especially with youth, has just changed completely. So it was great timing for this particular project that the YRAP was there and eager to collaborate and ha[d] the skills in place so that we were able to kind of jump into that relationship process with a lot of those supports already in place.  

  

Jeanna: What were some of your key learnings from your experience working with the YRAP? 

Dr. Munro: That I want to find more ways to keep capacity for groups like this going. You were [telling me earlier] that it had an impact on you, it was meaningful, especially during COVID. I had the same experience with another group of parents that I collaborate with. They’re an advisory group like the [YRAP], and one of the things that they talked about was how much they took away from the group experience. I think that [when] doing any kind of partner research or patient engagement, that there needs to be that kind of mutual reciprocity really built into it so that the people who are giving their time in actually informing the research process actually feel like they’re getting something out of it too. What I really take away from my experience is that this is a model of engagement that we need to replicate. It shouldn’t just be in COVID times or just around research with youth. I think it should be something where we look at what worked successfully for the [YRAP] and try and replicate that across different areas and across research.  

  

Jeanna: Do you think there’s a growing desire among researchers in your field to have more input from youth in their research?  

Dr. Munro: I think there’s maybe a desire but a lack of understanding of how to do it. In health research so much of the training is focused on, well unless it’s interdisciplinary, it’s usually that you don’t get a lot of training in the skills required to do this kind of work. So a lot of people feel like it’s intimidating to get into. They don’t really know how to do it, they don’t have maybe the language with which to speak to youth. Or maybe they even do research in an area … [such as] bench science or clinical research [where] they don’t see how they can really meaningfully work with youth who would be affected so much further down the research pipeline. So while there may be an interest and even a kind of push from funders to do it, I think that there’s still a sense of ‘how do I get started?’ from researchers. Whereas the idea of doing work in partnership is not new to research more broadly. It’s something that anthropologists and social scientists have been doing for a really long time—people who would be more familiar with words like, “community-based research” or “participatory action research.” None of that is new. But it is nice to see that beautiful, rich tradition of research is making its way and it’s bleeding into healthcare research these days. 

 

 

Jeanna: What would you say are some of the challenges of incorporating youth feedback into research?  

Dr. Munro: I think that research conventions make it really difficult to retain youth voices. So what I had as a product of my time with the YRAP was a research proposal. And the process of translation from the kind of conversation we had with the [YRAP] to where it ended up in the proposal was very much filtering it through academic jargon, which truly loses how vibrant and how exciting the feedback was. I think that what we could be thinking about is what are some unique and out-of-the-box ways to represent patient voices? One thing I really like is the letter of support that was included [with] my grant, that was written by members of the [YRAP] in their own voices. And a lot of the content we had in the grant like how we were going to do our engagement for the project, the type of language and terminology that we were choosing, there was that space in the support letter to represent that in youth’s own voices. And I think that’s really important. We need to have more opportunities for that, whether it’s personal statements … or a way to include direct quotes from youth in the grant. That would be, I think, a really nice way to make sure that we’re not repurposing or even co-opting youth voices as researchers.   

  

Jeanna: Do you see this type of panel being adopted in other fields of research or even other parts of the world? Do you see this kind of model being replicated?  

Dr. Munro: Well, I’ve already stolen ideas from it! I was really inspired by some of the infrastructure and I used it to help my parent advisory group. So this is a group of fifteen people with children of ages 0-5, and they meet with me on a monthly basis to provide feedback on the research that I’m doing around pregnancy and reproduction. We don’t have any youth members in this group but … the way that the [YRAP] provided feedback on my grant proposal, I was able to take some of the inspiration and some of the questions in the conversation we had and to facilitate some of the meetings with my parent advisory group. So it took on a similar model, which led to some great discussions and touched on things we never would have explored before had I not changed how we facilitated those group meetings. I think for other [research] areas, it doesn’t have to be restricted to youth. I think the model of the panel would be great for a lot of other populations and clinical topic areas … because it has the potential for so much more sustainability, and also … there’s this kind of reciprocity piece. Having that opportunity to have a meaningful say in the research process, to connect with peers and build community. … [W]hat I find when people participate in the research process, who aren’t researchers themselves, there’s a sense of, not necessarily validation, but [they] feel seen and respected and heard …  

  

 

Jeanna: Do you think that in research, the knowledge researchers acquire through education and working in the field can sometimes conflict with first-hand and lived experience?  

Dr. Munro: Yeah, but conflict isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And I mean as a qualitative researcher I believe that knowledge is subjective, and is constructed, and is contextual. There is not necessarily truth being covered through our studies, but potentially many knowledges that may conflict with each other. And it’s important to take those moments of conflict and think of them as opportunities. Where do we have common ground? Why do we have different perspectives? If there’s, say, knowledge that’s being generated through traditional academic research that conflicts with patient and youth experiences, then we need to interrogate [whether] that knowledge [was] created in a way that … is not going to reflect youth experiences because it wasn’t developed by and for youth. 

  

Jeanna: In your opinion, what are the benefits of working with a group like the YRAP on grant proposals? 

Dr. Munro: I mean the simplest logical benefit is that it makes the research better. … [I]f as researchers we create knowledge that doesn’t reflect youth experiences or isn’t grounded in research questions that are important to youth, then what’s the point of it? It’s not going to actually have the change or the impact that we’re seeking, which is to improve healthcare access and experiences for youth. At the end of the day, I think that’s what drives my research, and having a YRAP and models like that ensures that we make the research process as relevant as possible to youth from day one, from the moment of coming up with a research question. 

 

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About Jeanna Pillainayagam 

Image description: A person of colour smiling at the camera against a black background.

Jeanna Pillainayagam is currently a member of the Foundry Provincial Youth Advisory Committee, and was a member of the Youth Research Advisory Panel (YRAP). She also has volunteer experience with mental health organizations including CMHA-BC and Jack.org, and has previously worked on mental health projects with groups such as Anxiety Canada, the University of Northern British Columbia, and the BC School Counsellors Association. She is passionate about promoting mental health education and destigmatizing mental illness.

Jeanna believes the YRAP was an excellent opportunity for young people to advocate for the needs of youth in terms of creating accessible, adequate, and appropriate health/wellness services. She hopes to see more programs like the YRAP in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Keywords: youth research, accessible research,  Foundry BC, Foundry, Feedback, Research, Youth, Youth Research, Youth Participants, Practicality, Nuance, Privacy, Research Study, community-based research, participatory action research, healthcare access 

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