1st Annual Conference on Child Behavioral Health in SSA

From July 12-15, 2016 in Kampala, Uganda, the SMART Africa Center partnered with Columbia University’s International Center for Child Health and Asset Development (ICHAD) and The AfriChild Centre of Excellence on the African Child to host the first annual Conference on Child Behavioral Health in Sub-Saharan Africa: Innovative Research and Interdisciplinary Partnerships to Scale Up Evidence-Based Practice in Uganda, Ghana, and Kenya.

Presided over by the First Lady of Uganda, Honorable Janet Museveni, the conference brought together policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and community members to begin to collaboratively develop and test theoretically informed, culturally appropriate, evidence-based, youth- and family-focused service models. Over the first two days, presenters and participants from Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and the United States addressed what has been done so far, where the challenges and gaps lie, and future directions. In their welcoming remarks, Dr. Mary McKay, Dr. Fred Ssewamala of ICHAD, and Ms. Joyce Wanican of AfriChild emphasized that widespread child behavioral health issues in Sub-Saharan Africa are associated with the daily challenges that youth in the region face. This includes bereavement due to loss of parents to AIDS, extreme poverty, conflict, displacement, illness, and physical and sexual victimization. They reported that until now, development and scale-up of evidence-based behavioral health services for children and youth have been hampered by limited research in the field and a lack of culturally-appropriate evidence-based services – the obstacles the conference and SMART Africa Center were specifically designed to address.

In her keynote address, Ms. Museveni, who doubles as Uganda’s Minister of Education and Sports, highlighted the importance of addressing child mental health in health programming and voiced the government’s commitment to developing a solid policy framework for the betterment of Ugandan children, working in tandem with colleagues across the African continent.

Researchers from Africa and the U.S. discussed results from ongoing projects on child mental health across the African continent and others reported on existing capacity building initiatives. The theme that emerged was that the limited number of trained mental health researchers and practitioners in Sub-Saharan Africa, along with the stigma associated with mental health problems and the lack of partnership with more skilled African researchers, has left many gaps in research and services.

With the premise that collaboration is key to filling to gaps, the conference enabled the policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and community members in attendance to begin to learn from each other, establish a common ground of knowledge and expertise, and strengthen partnerships for the next steps of the project. Breakout sessions featuring researchers and NGO leaders from each of the target countries focused on identifying the opportunities to support child behavioral health. Local government and NIH leaders shared their perspectives on aligning child mental health research, service, and policy partners. In addition, researchers from South Africa and Uganda who have established strong relationships with local stakeholders, discussed their experiences designing effective and efficient research in child behavioral health.

This conference also launched a Global Behavioral Health Fellowship program for new investigators and PhD candidates committed to behavioral health research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Each of the nine fellows is paired with a senior scholar to collaborate on conference-related research studies and publications. In the conference’s final two days, these teams of investigators and fellows made site visits to gain practical insights that inform implementation of the SMART Africa Center’s ongoing work.

To access the conference presentations, please click here.

To access the video for the first day of the conference, please click here.

To access the video for the second day of the conference, please click here.