A new collaboration between SNF and the Child Mind Institute will establish the SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute. The Child Mind Institute is a nonprofit leader in care, training, and science for children’s mental health.
Conceptualized within the context SNF Global Health Initiative (GHI), the SNF Global Center’s mission is to scale up what the Child Mind Institute does best in order to enhance mental health care for children and adolescents globally by increasing access to information, improving quality of care, and reducing stigma and discrimination.
The SNF Global Center takes aim at an alarming global situation – it is estimated that 1 in 5 children have a mental health or learning disorder – in a timely moment as the world begins to grapple with the pandemic’s collective impact on mental health. Children and adolescents around the world are underserved by current systems, with disproportionate effects on marginalized and under-resourced communities.
With a focus on building strategic partnerships globally, fostering networks of professionals and bringing them into an open science-based culture, empowering the next generation of leaders worldwide, and supporting and enabling ground-up local initiatives in many countries and regions, the Global Center aims to change this. Critically, the Global Center’s efforts will be deeply informed by the Child Mind Institute’s ongoing work on its Child and Adolescent Mental Health Initiative (CAMHI) in Greece. The Global Center’s work will be organized around six strategic initiatives:
- Building country- and region-specific mental health needs assessments and making the research, methodology, and findings open access
- Culturally adapting free informational resources, trainings, and treatment protocols so they are culturally relevant for professionals and communities worldwide
- Identifying and testing technology-based innovations to bring care to children who don’t have access to clinical offices
- Making the free resources available on childmind.org, which is accessed by nearly 3 million people each month, more accessible by increasing translation efforts and adding new global voices to our anti-stigma campaigns
- Creating fellowship programs for clinicians and researchers in low- and middle-income countries to empower the next generation of child and adolescent mental health leaders
- Accelerating global collaboration through annual events, placing a great emphasis on under-researched areas of child and adolescent mental health
With the Child Mind Institute as a non-profit steeped in open science and research innovation, the SNF Global Center will be uniquely placed to translate the best available scientific evidence into effective care, fill critical knowledge gaps, incubate innovations, and engage and empower professionals and families who can reach children where they are, to make a meaningful difference in the lives of children and adolescents around the world.
This SNF grant builds on a longstanding relationship between SNF and the Child Mind Institute, including in support of the CAMHI in Greece. SNF is also supporting the Child Mind Institute’s school-based mental health skills building programming and clinician interventions in New York City, as well as expansion of the organization’s School and Community Programs to other schools across the US through training for school professionals. Past SNF grants have supported the Child Mind Institute’s Healthy Brain Network, a school-based mental health wellbeing pilot program, and other Child Mind Institute advocacy efforts.
