“More Powerful Together” – Celebrating the launch of MHIN Africa's hub
In 2016, we (The Mental Health Innovation Network (MHIN) Global and African mental health stakeholders) came together with the support of the global mental health community, bound by an interest in developing, nurturing and supporting a strong network of African mental health stakeholders. As a result of this, we launched the first MHIN regional hub – MHIN Africa. MHIN Africa was created with the principle that African mental health stakeholders are more powerful when working together to transform mental health care in the continent.
Since that launch almost two years ago, we have built a strong network of various players in the field around the continent including end-users, practitioners, advocates, policy-makers and the like, who have shared with us and our community their unique innovations, resources and outputs of their work, striving to make “mental health matter” across Africa. It is because of this support and growth of the MHIN Africa community that our mother network, MHIN Global, is now launching the collaborations tab as an expansion of their work as a regional hub to provide MHIN Africa, and other MHIN Global projects highlighting progress in the global mental health arena, with its own dedicated online space.
Purpose and Vision: From here on
MHIN Africa is a regionally-focused network that operates within the MHIN Global website with the specific mandate of addressing the needs of African mental health stakeholders. The purpose of this regional hub is to provide targeted and dedicated support to innovators in the region and to synthesise knowledge, better publicise and disseminate evidence and successful implementation and scale up of mental health programmes to help promote uptake of evidence into research, policy and practice across the continent.
MHIN Africa aims to facilitate the development and uptake of effective mental health interventions by:
- Enabling learning
- Building partnerships
- Synthesizing and disseminating knowledge
- Leveraging resources
With this regionally focused network, we build stronger mental health systems, strengthen South-to-South partnerships, collaborations, knowledge-sharing and capacity-building.
The Collaborations Launch
The MHIN Collaborations tab will allow members and users interested in Africa specifically to register their own organisations, interact with other Africa members, access Africa-specific content such as innovation case studies, resources and blogs, as well as sign up to the MHIN Africa newsletter.
The launch of this collaboration with MHIN Global, which is the development of MHIN Africa’s first online platform on the Network, is evidence of our commitment to strengthening the access of evidence-based knowledge to our African community. Members of the MHIN Africa community of practice now have a dedicated space within which to explore and contribute mental health content related to the region. Our progress is reflective of our belief that we are the strongest when together.
Growing from strength to strength
MHIN Africa has grown from strength-to-strength in the past two years, and it’s all thanks to our community members who sign up to the network on a daily basis, who volunteer with us to help grow the network in their respective regions and countries in the continent. The Africa network has, to date, registered more than 125 organisations, 60 innovations, 100 resources, with more than 2300 members of which more than 1340 of those have subscribed to our quarterly newsletter. Keep watching this space as we continue to strive for better uptake of mental health services as well as its delivery across Africa!
Connect with us
To get involved and stay up-to-date with African mental health developments, you can connect with us via the channels below:
- Sign up to become an MHIN member
- Visit our collaborations and community pages
- For the latest updates about MHIN Africa, sign up to our mailing list
- Send us an email
- Like us on Facebook
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Google+
Become our knowledge exchange volunteer and help run MHIN Africa in your community
Do you have an interest in public mental health in Africa? Do you enjoy writing and have social media skills? If you said "YES" to both questions, check out this exciting opportunity to become one of our volunteers within your region. If you are interested, we would love to hear from you. Email us and tell us about yourself and the work that you do.
For more information, visit the Mental Health Innovation Network Africa collaborations page and profile.
Acknowledgement: MHIN Africa is the first regional hub of the Mental Health Innovation Network (MHIN) and is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (grant U19MH095699-05S1) through AFFIRM. MHIN is a partnership between the Centre for Global Mental Health and the World Health Organisation. MHIN Africa is supported from the Alan J. Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health, University of Cape Town, South Africa.