Implementation and Management Advisement, Leadership Development, and Career Mentorship
PIH aligns mental health service delivery, training, and research, and optimizes academic opportunities with partner institutions. A primary example is the Harvard University Global Health Delivery Partnership, linked through the Program in Global Mental Health and Social Change at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and now through GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard. The linkage of high-quality services for the poor with an academic mission is what makes PIH unique. This linkage includes the Dr. Mario Pagenel Fellowship in Global Mental Health Delivery —an opportunity for early-career psychiatrists in the US to gain firsthand global health delivery experience— and the involvement of site-based mental health implementers in Harvard MMSc-GHD Programs. PIH partners closely with leading hospitals in the US such as the Chester M. Piece MD Division of Global Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Psychiatry.
Click below to learn more about the interview with Global Mental Health Delivery Fellow Swapna Moorthy:
Four Pillars of the Trans-National Consultation Model
In less than a decade PIH has made significant progress in improving the quality of—and expanding access to—mental health care in countries around the world. We have integrated mental health services into the care provided at PIH sites by using a trans-national consultation model established on four pillars:
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Provide sustained clinical services support, supervision and mentorship to local health care teams;
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Provide program implementation and management accompaniment as well as technical advisement to care delivery sites;
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Provide targeted research support to answer critical questions related to locally determined service delivery goals; and
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Strengthen the use of quality improvement methods, data collection systems, and technology integrated within local systems.
Mental Health Learning Collaborative
PIH brings together stakeholders from all aspects of the health system, including community health workers (CHWs), clinicians, program management, operations staff, and local leaders, to catalyze a global community of mental health practitioners, advocates, and innovators. As part of this, the PIH Cross-Site Mental Health Learning Collaborative (MHLC), formalized in 2016, is a platform across OnePIH’s sites to address global mental health delivery challenges. The MHLC:
Increases the reach and quality of services and helps ensure that the health systems are equipped.
Priorities are locally driven, and lessons learned are shared through site-to-site and cross-site capacity building and trainings.
Includes an online library with mental health training materials, which can be adapted to local contexts, and an analytics dashboard that compiles tools used in delivering care.
Was expanded during COVID19 into a forum to share learnings from the mental health and psychosocial support response through regular cross-site calls, digital knowledge sharing, a weekly newsletter, and virtual trainings.
Includes colleagues from around the world who share strategies for addressing mental health and psychosocial needs, centered around the PIH Cross-Ste Mental Health program’s integrated COVID-19 response.
Staff Wellness
The COVID-19 pandemic has continued its devastation around the world, marked by the continuation of rapid community spread, interruptions to daily life and impact on mental health, and tragic impacts to global and local economies. In particular, the pandemic response has taken a significant toll on frontline health care providers. High levels of stress, anxiety, and stigma can develop under emergency circumstances and increase health care workers’ risk for burnout, create new mental health conditions, and worsen pre-existing ones.
It is a critical time to support low- and middle-income countries in a resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The PIH Staff Wellness initiatives seek to build resiliency, community, and solidarity for frontline workers and colleagues across all PIH sites. Since March 2020, over 3,146 people have been trained at PIH sites in Psychological First Aid, an initial disaster response intervention that promotes the safety and stabilization of individuals and connects them to help and resources. To continue this work, the PIH Staff Wellness program:
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Strengthens implementation of staff wellness programs through peer support groups, wellness training and workshops, and community building activities;
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Continues to train staff in Psychological First Aid
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Supports the wellness needs of contact tracers in the Massachusetts Community Tracing Collaborative, our cadre of frontline workers in the U.S.
Professional Development
The PIH mental health program promotes professional development opportunities for staff across sites. Mental health practitioners participate in research conferences and presentations, global health meetings, and implementation courses and trainings. These initiatives serve as opportunities to both promote capacity building within PIH and disseminate critically important implementation experiences externally.