Health Research Training Platform: Digital Mental Health for families, parents, youth and children

The DIVERT Mental Health Platform (Digital Inclusive Virtual and Equitable Research Training in Mental Health Platform) is a collaborative training program that will promote significant changes in child and family mental health system by training the next generation of computer scientists and health professionals who are in research tracks. Diverse Canadians are not well-represented in mental health research training faculty across Canada nor can these academic programs keep up with changes in digital technologies that can increase accessibility to mental health programs. Building on Inclusivity and Accessibility, DIVERT Mental Health will bring together academic, industry, health system and NGO expertise across Canada to build a multi-disciplinary learning platform that will be available to all mental health academic programs to teach, train and mentor in inclusive and accessible interventions. In addition to our main focus on emerging researchers, we will make available many of our training events and materials to a wider audience of clinical trainees to foster inclusivity and diversity. This collaborative training grant will allow for the development of an innovative, interdisciplinary training program that attracts diverse trainees and focuses on cutting-edge research on internet technologies using cloud computing, and big data analytics. The primary goal of this grant will be to equip young scientists with a broad range of knowledge, skills principles and practices to build, evaluate and disseminate a new wave in mental health that focuses on inclusive and accessible digital interventions. Our objective is to graduate highly qualified personnel (HQP) with top-tier academic and applied research expertise, ready to meet national and international demand for professionals in this field, both within and outside academia.