Introduction

KDE Hub co-presenting with projects

The KDE Hub was invited to present at two conferences recently and we asked representatives from MHP-IF project teams to join us. Why blog about this? Because it’s a tangible way to show how we can collaborate and add value to each other and to the field of mental health promotion. It’s also an open invitation to projects and others who may want to collaborate with the Hub. We welcome your ideas.

The format of each session was similar: welcoming participants with an introductory question or two, a brief summary of lessons from the Hub-led Pandemic Adaptations study, project sharing about their adaptations, and dialogue with all session attendees. In both sessions, the project team representatives were invited to briefly describe their project (with their infographic as a visual), comment on their pandemic adaptations in relation to the lessons from the study and consider a selection of follow-up questions from the attendees and the Hub team.

Invitations to participate were sent to a subset of projects whose work aligned most with the themes and geographical regions of these recent conferences. A special thanks to the following projects who had team members join us in the planning and execution of these two sessions:

  • Community-Based Research Centre: ‘Do You Mind?’ project
  • Community Food Centres Canada: ‘Mind Your Food’ project
  • Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative: ‘Celebrating Culture, Celebrating Life’ project
  • Nova Scotia Early Childhood Development Intervention Services: ‘Positive Solutions for Families’ project
  • Strongest Families Institute: ‘Parents Empowering Kids – the Early Years’ project
  • Students Commission of Canada: ‘Authentic Social Identity and Mental Health’ project
  • The Pas Family Resource Centre: ‘The Cedar Path’ project

Over time, we hope to co-present with all MHP-IF projects and grow our collective contributions to mental health promotion in Canada. An upcoming opportunity for testing and adapting this style of engagement is at the KDE Hub Annual Symposium 2022.

For more details on the two recent sessions, check out the Event Briefs below.