Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

In 2014, the Dietitians of Canada, the Canadian Mental Health Association in Ontario and the University of British Columbia completed a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded national consultation that resulted in the identification of nutrition and mental health research priorities in Canada. As an important next step to this national initiative, the collaborators will act upon the identified research priorities by integrating knowledge from the consultation, bridging partnerships among researchers and knowledge users, and fostering new nutrition and mental health research, knowledge transfer activities, products, policy actions, educational activities, and practice changes. The project, referred to as "Bridging the Divides", will include the development of tools and resources with the guidance and assistance of an international nutrition knowledge transcription service called Practice-based Evidence in Nutrition or PEN. The products that will be developed will be based on the identified research priorities and tailored for different users including researchers, policy makers, health professionals, as well as people with lived experience of mental illness and the individuals who support them. In addition, a website will be developed as a central hub to support all knowledge activities such as project updates, knowledge products, event listings and registration forms. The site will also host a contact database to support project communications and promote linkages among stakeholders. All of the project initiatives will be evaluated to determine the extent that new research, collaborations, products, policy actions, educational activities and practice changes were started and their successes. The products, tools, collaborations, and research that result from the Bridging the Divides project will improve population health as well as nutrition and mental health programs and services.