August 4, 2021
According to a news release of August 4, 2021, "The Government of Canada is investing in some of our country’s brightest minds – to provide them with the opportunity to work directly within our health systems and tackle our most pressing and complex issues."
Funding for this program is provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé, and Mitacs, as well as 35 health system partner-organizations across Canada that are embedding the fellows.
In making the announcement, The Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Health, noted,
“The Government of Canada is proud to support the Health System Impact Fellowship program. This program gives some of Canada’s most talented scholars hands-on experience where they can apply their skills, help improve our health care systems, and support the health and well-being of all Canadians. Congratulations to this year’s fellows.”
The School of Nursing at UBC Vancouver, one of ten universities supporting "our country's brightest minds" in this initiative, offers congratulations to UBC Nursing Post-Doctoral Fellow and new Health System Impact Fellow, Dr. Corey McAuliffe, who is supervised by Dr. Emily Jenkins. Dr. McAuliffe's research, entitled Building Capacity for Campus Suicide Prevention: A Policy Practice Partnership states:
Post-secondary student mental health is of great concern, with increased rates of anxiety, depression, feelings of isolation, and suicidality observed. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated mental health stressors and concerns about campus suicides, already on the rise. In response, the BC Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions has funded the BC Campus Suicide Prevention Initiative (CSPI), partnering with the Canadian Mental Health Association, BC division (CMHA BC) who will distribute funding and offer technical support to all 25 BC publicly-funded post-secondary institutions. This HSIF project will evaluate the implementation and early impacts of the CSPI, identify where further support is needed, and provide recommendations for how the public health system can ensure long-term and sustainable impacts and national scale-up to improve post-secondary suicide prevention and overall mental health and well-being.
This study has the following aims:
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to monitor early outcomes across the CSPI program's implementation;
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to understand the mediating role of CMHA BC (program administrator and technical support coordinator) in the collaborative processes and outcomes of participating post-secondary institutions; and
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to assess scalability and sustainability of the CSPI in BC and nationally.
An evaluation-based multi-method approach will be used, to thoroughly identify how the CSPI works, for whom, and in what contexts - illustrated through CMO configurations (Contextual conditions, generative Mechanisms, and Outcomes). Qualitative stakeholder interviews, collection of project documents, and observing technical support sessions will inform creation and analysis of data. Ongoing analyses, used to build CMO configurations, will focus on understanding how CSPI implementation operates and with what effect. Findings will be leveraged to directly affect and optimize suicide prevention programs, policies, and resources locally, nationally and internationally.
