Partners In Health Rwanda Mental Health team

For the past 7 years, the Abundance Project for Global Health has supported the Program in Global Mental Health and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, along with Mental Health programs at Partners In Health.

The Abundance Project for Global Health also supported the implementation of the Abundance Fellowship in Global Mental Health Implementation Science, which endeavors to create a model for global mental health implementation, research, training, career development, and capacity building for mental health services in resource-limited countries.

The Fellowship supported two research fellows, one in Rwanda, and one in Peru. Through that fellowship we introduced Jerome Galea, PhD MSW, a researcher on HIV, to research in global mental health. With Abundance support and through Jerome and others on the team, the project succeeded in catalyzing a movement for global mental health in Peru, in collaboration with a government team committed to actively decentralizing care. Abundance also supported the continuation of the Dr. Mario Pagenel Global Mental Health Delivery Fellowship.

Dr. Guiseppe Raviola — who leads Abundance’s Mental Health initiatives — is the director of mental health for Partners In Health and is the Director of the Program in Global Mental Health and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. According to Dr. Raviola, Abundance’s investment of over a million dollars in global mental health care delivery and research has led to a five-fold return in terms of new funding and donor support. It led to positive developments in terms of fostering new, major, government-run national mental health initiatives in a number of countries. It led to the development of 12 careers for US nationals in global mental health delivery and research, and 40 careers in mental health service delivery for implementers working in low income countries. This included three MMSc-GHD degrees at Harvard Medical School. All of this work, taken together, led to needed, lifesaving mental health services for more than 20,000 people in Haiti, Rwanda, and elsewhere.

Abundance Foundation is proud of our work in this field, and remains committed to quality mental health care delivery and research worldwide.