RedeAmericas: building research capacity in young leaders for sustainable growth in community mental health services in Latin America

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and initial accomplishments of a training program of young leaders in community mental health research as part of a Latin American initiative known as RedeAmericas. RedeAmericas was one of five regional ‘Hubs’ funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to improve community mental health care and build mental health research capacity in low- and middle-income countries. It included investigators in six Latin American cities – Santiago, Chile; Medellín, Colombia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Córdoba, Neuquén, and Buenos Aires in Argentina – working together with a team affiliated with the Global Mental Health program at Columbia University in New York City. One component of RedeAmericas was a capacity-building effort that included an Awardee program for early career researchers in the mental health field. We review the aims of this component, how it developed, and what was learned that would be useful for future capacity-building efforts, and also comment on future prospects for maintaining this type of effort.

Enhancing mental health research capacity: emerging voices from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) global hubs

“…Initiatives that help develop or provide access to resources and the benefits of research collaboration to these countries are important tools to overcome many of the existing barriers [20]. Research capacity-building (CB) activities in particular could make an important contribution to the transformation of mental health services in LMIC by creating opportunities to train young professionals to become independent and competitive on the global scientific stage, generate collaborative international networks, produce partnerships between research teams, local implementers and policymakers, conduct contextually relevant research with a higher chance of country ownership and translation into practice, and provide mentoring to budding researchers [21–23]. Despite this, research capacity-building experiences based on LMIC and HIC partnerships have been scarcely investigated and reported.…”

Development and evaluation of addiction treatment programs in Latin America

“…Studies show the lack of published evaluative evidence on prevention and treatment programs in Latin American countries [29, 41, 42] . Adopting an evaluation culture in the region could be a step towards promoting collaborative networks that link public policy makers, treatment agencies, research institutions and universities, in order to implement evidence-based strategies that respond to the community’s needs regarding prevention and treatment.…”

“…Adopting an evaluation culture in the region could be a step towards promoting collaborative networks that link public policy makers, treatment agencies, research institutions and universities, in order to implement evidence-based strategies that respond to the community’s needs regarding prevention and treatment. This proactive initiative would facilitate the creation of self-sustaining human resource training networks with specific knowledge and skills, which subsequently facilitate the generation of scientific evidence and increase scientific production on addiction and mental health issues [29, 42] .…”

Health research mentorship in low- and middle-income countries: a scoping review

“…The characteristics of included studies are presented in Appendix IV. The included sources were published between 2009 and 2021, 2,5,8,9,16–88 and most (n=57, 74%) were published from 2017 onward. The majority of the papers were from Africa (n=28) 8,17,18,24,33–35,37,41–44,46,48,50,51,53,57,59,61,62,65,66,68,79–81,85 .…”