Held since 2004, the Atlantic Summer Institute on Healthy and Safe Communities (ASI) brings together community groups, researchers, practitioners, educators and government representatives from across Atlantic Canada and beyond. ASI 2021 hosted their Atlantic Policy Forum on Mental Health Promotion entitled The Great Reconnect: Building Personal, Community and Societal Resilience for our Post COVID-19 World. The goal was to: i) think ahead about how we want to build back to a better, more equitable and sustainable world, in our communities, our provinces and our region; and ii) to inspire and challenge participants to reach beyond regular connections and comfort zones to find new ways to invest energy and resources upstream to promote the mental health of infants, children and youth.
The KDE Hub was invited to host a workshop at ASI 2021. The Hub workshop was repeated on August 24 and 25. Speakers included Hub team members and members from 5 MHP-IF projects with intervention sites in the Atlantic provinces. The goal of this workshop was to share findings from the pandemic adaptation stories from all 20 MHP-IF projects across Canada, spotlight Atlantic experiences, and engage participants in exploring how these findings can help guide their own and others’ efforts to strengthen resilience at personal, community and system levels.