Operating Grant: Evaluation & Implementation Science: Youth Mental Health

Young people across Canada are struggling with their mental health with reported increases in anxiety, depression and overall mental or psychological distress. In 2024, the Government of Canada established the Youth Mental Health Fund (YMHF) to create lasting and meaningful improvements in the mental health of young people and their families through increased access to evidence-based mental health services. There is an urgent need to bridge the gap between research and practice and to develop prevention and intervention strategies that effectively respond to local needs, with a focus on First Nations, Inuit and Métis (Indigenous) Peoples and equity-denied populations. Although a number of Evidence Based Practices (EBPs) are shown to improve access, quality of services and outcomes in youth mental health, it is unclear to what extent and with what fidelity these are implemented in Canada, how well they adapt to continuously evolving psychosocial contexts and new technologies, including e-Mental Health and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled tools, as well as how well they respond to the growing need for integrated care, prevention and culturally relevant approaches.

The current funding opportunity aims to support high-quality evaluation and/or implementation science research on youth mental health interventions, as they are being scaled through the YMHF, and through other initiatives, across the research-to-scale continuum in Canada. For evaluation research, the focus is on generating robust evidence on feasibility, efficacy, or effectiveness of evidence-informed interventions adapted for new contexts or with under-studied populations using rigorous methodological designs. For implementation science research, the focus is on interventions with established efficacy or effectiveness and are ready to be sustained, optimized or scaled out/up. This research will examine strategies to improve or maintain outcomes, while optimizing adoption, integration, scale-out/up, sustainability and equity across real-world environments.