Dietitians of Canada (DC), in collaboration with the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario (CMHA Ontario), and the University of British Columbia (UBC), is pleased to announce receipt of a one-year planning grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, effective March 1, 2013. The goal of the “Dietitians and Community Mental Health” project is to develop a nutrition and mental health research agenda that focuses on policy and practice mechanisms to increase access to and quality of dietetic services in community mental health settings. The collaborative process will include mental health service providers, dietitians and dietetic educators, policymakers, and people with lived experience of mental illness. Incorporating the voices of stakeholders will help to identify areas where investments in research can most improve the community mental health system.
All stakeholders will be invited to complete an online survey in spring/summer 2013. Information from the survey will be used to identify key informants for in-depth interviews and to guide the organization of a face-to-face workshop to be hosted in fall 2013, for review of the findings and to set research priorities.
The project builds on recommendations from DC’s role paper, “Promoting Mental Health through Healthy Eating and Nutritional Care,” published in December 2012. The DC role is available online at www.dietitians.ca.
For more information, contact, at Pat Vanderkooy, Public Affairs Manager, Dietitians of Canada, or Scott Mitchell, Director, Knowledge Transfer, CMHA Ontario.