SNF Global Health Initiative (GHI): Focus on mental health

Soccer pitches and science labs: Connecting mental health efforts worldwide

Rising mental health struggles, especially those faced by young people, are widely recognized as a significant challenge facing humanity, but opinions on how best to address them may vary almost as widely. SNF’s approach is to champion a variety of interventions closely tailored to local contexts and developed by local practitioners, then connect those practitioners across boundaries borders to help ensure that effective solutions are shared as widely as possible.

SNF’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) supports a wide range of projects related to mental health, from sports-based youth development taking place out on soccer pitches to renovations that make the inside of an adolescent psychiatric ward feel more human.
SNF Co-President Andreas Dracopoulos will lead a discussion with close SNF GHI collaborators from the New York-based Child Mind Institute, its SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Initiative under implementation across Greece, the SNF Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health at Columbia University, global youth development organization Grassroot Soccer, and the adolescent psychiatry unit at one of South Africa’s largest public hospitals. 

They’ll discuss how collaborating with one another and with other institutions has strengthened their work, as well as how cutting-edge research, sports-based programming, partnership with public systems, and listening closely to the needs of patients and practitioners can lead to better holistic mental health outcomes—particularly for young people—from Kenya to Brazil to the United States and beyond.