Voices that Count: Providing Culturally Inclusive Mental Health and Substance Use Health Service Delivery to Youths of African Descent in Canada

The proposed study will highlight the structural and systemic issues moderating the lives and wellbeing of youths of African Descent (AD), their families and caregivers seeking MHSU services in Nova Scotia by investigating the approaches to health care delivery adopted by health providers, to ensure the delivery of inclusive and equitable care. Currently, there persists a paucity of empirical data on the coping mechanisms of persons of African Descent (PAD) and its impact on social determinants of health and access to MHSU services across their statuses (immigrants, African Nova Scotians etc) and socio-cultural-economic spheres. Considering that the negotiations PAD make in accessing MSHU services are likely to compromise such social determinants of health as employment, housing, and food for affected persons, it is crucial that effective policymaking aimed at understanding effective health standards should not be based on generalizations about the experiences and needs of target populations accessing MHSU services. There should be feedback on health care delivery and interventions from people with lived and living experiences of MHSU; with an attempt to ensure that health providers understand the experiences of service users of AD in navigating stigma and discrimination associated with MHSU. The proposed one-year project aims to situate the research within alternative research methods that project African knowledge and ways of healing/coping. The study will be situated within Critical Race Theory, Postcoloniality and Afrocentricity and adopt a mixed-method for data collection that allow for Counter-StoryTelling styles entrenched in African traditional oral practices. A purposeful sampling method will be used to recruit 60 youths (18-25 years), 20-25 family members and care givers of AD resident in Nova Scotia across their intersecting biological and/or socio-cultural identities and 200 health service providers working with PAD accessing MHSU services in Canada.