Study goals

The study goals are organized into work packages.

WP1 – Partnerships and Joint Development

1) Establish, in each location, an Indigenous Adolescent Interest Group (GIAI) and an Implementation Interest Group (GMI PI);

2) Jointly develop culturally adapted and evidence-based messages about mental health (MH) that can be promoted in school activities and within the villages;

3) Co-adapt the mhGAP-IG by culturally integrating knowledge and customs centered on good mental health.

WP2 – Capacity Building of Implementers

1) Train Indigenous teachers, community leaders, and healthcare workers to promote culturally adapted and evidence-based mental health (MH) messages;

2) Train teachers, social workers, and healthcare providers in the mhGAP-IG for the identification and management of the most common MH problems among adolescents.

WP3 – Programme Evaluation

1) Provide an in-depth understanding of how the programme is implemented and operates within a complex social system to improve health outcomes for Indigenous adolescents;

2) Generate theoretical generalizations on how to implement similar programmes in Brazil, Dominica, and other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

WP4 – Knowledge Exchange and Impact

1) Create an online multimedia knowledge exchange platform and training hubs to rapidly disseminate knowledge about the study and to serve as training centers for Indigenous adolescents and youth;

2) Establish an Indigenous Youth Expert Group (YEG) that includes members from the Indigenous Adolescent Interest Groups (GAI);

3) Support Indigenous adolescents and youth in writing blogs, reports, and articles about the study to ensure accessible dissemination through multimedia channels;

4) Support the ASGs (Adolescent Support Groups) and YEGs in discussion forums and policy and practice workshops to explore the usefulness of the study’s findings in strengthening the response of schools and Primary Health Care services to Indigenous adolescent mental health needs.

 Our study is guided by the He Pikinga Waiora (HPW) framework developed by Oetzel et al. (2018), an implementation structure that provides a solid foundation for designing and delivering health interventions in Indigenous communities for non-communicable diseases. The framework is built around four key elements: community engagement, cultural-centeredness, systems thinking, and integrated knowledge translation. It emphasizes a participatory research approach for co-designing projects with end users.

The overarching methodology ensures that the programme is user-led and has already informed several initiatives, including our current community gardening and horticulture programme. The framework also addresses aspects of power-sharing and horizontality, ensuring that Indigenous populations have a meaningful voice at all levels of the research process.