WHO WE ARE

WHAT IS CAREMH?

 

CAREMH, the Consortium for Applied Research and Evaluation in Mental Health, is a network of people focused on improving the well-being of persons with serious mental illness (SMI) by promoting applied research, evaluation and knowledge transfer in mental health services.

The CAREMH membership includes a variety of stakeholders. In addition to consumers and their families, members’ perspectives cover the fields of business administration, economics, education, epidemiology, family medicine, law, nursing, political science, police services, psychiatry, psychology, social work and sociology. Stakeholders contribute insight and experience as consumers, researchers, health care practitioners, policy analysts, administrators and managers. They are located throughout the community and in district health councils, acute care and psychiatric hospitals, private practice, social services, housing, police services as well as universities.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CAREMH

CAREMH began in 2001 when a team of investigators, with a Canadian Donner Foundation grant, brought together consumers, researchers, service providers, program managers, policy developers and analysts. Their objective was an integrated program of applied research in de-institutionalized mental health services with southwestern Ontario as a ‘natural laboratory’.

They wanted to clarify the prevalence and needs of persons with SMI, to determine the factors related to appropriate service provision and prescribe methods for system improvement. The goal was to establish a base line understanding of a mental health system challenged with downsizing its psychiatric hospitals.

THE CAREMH MANDATE

The CAREMH mandate is to promote mental health and address mental illness by,

The mandate includes the following goals:

THE CAREMH MODEL

To ensure that evidence based findings would be translated into practice, they adopted a public health approach with four key components:

To that end, they welcomed a wide range of stakeholders to participate in a series of three colloquia which combined ‘knowledge users’ (consumers, program managers, service providers, policy developers) and researchers.

From this group emerged CAREMH: The Consortium for Applied Research and Evaluation in Mental Health. The public health approach of CAREMH’s members - with relevant stakeholders involved at the outset - has proven to be fruitful, leading to concrete changes in local practice as well as further research and evaluations, including:

CAREMH’s STRUCTURE

CAREMH is an informal and unincorporated network with its administrative centre at the Population and Community Health Unit (PCHU) of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) under the directorshipof the unit head, Dr. Evelyn Vingilis. Strategic direction is performed by a Steering Committee whose current members (Dr. Kathleen Hartford, Dr. Beth Mitchell, Mr. Ted Schrecker) are among the co-investigators on the CIHR grant which funds its operation. The Project Coordinator is Dr. Stephen State.

As a network of individual stakeholders, CAREMH does not speak on behalf of its membership on matters of policy. Individual members of the CAREMH network take responsibility for any public statements which they might make as individuals and should make clear that they do not speak for nor represent CAREMH.

CAREMH will take no proprietary interest in any intellectual property circulated or disseminated by members or others under its auspices. Documents and reports will only be posted, circulated or otherwise disseminated when permission to do so has been granted by the author/s through a release form.

CAREMH ACTIVITIES

CAREMH FUNDING

CAREMH currently operates and receives base funding under the terms of a five year [2003-8] Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) “Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement Team” grant whose stated objective is to “enhance and expand the process for research and knowledge translation”. CAREMH policies and procedures will follow CIHR guidelines whose website should be consulted for any needed clarification: http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/779.html