Global Mental Health Fellowship Opportunities

JCK Clinic Uganda Project Information *Closed as of Summer 2023*

Fellowship Award: $8,000.00
Number of openings: 2
Timeframe: Summer 2023
Eligibility: Graduate date of March 2024 or later

For the past 6 years, the JCK Foundation has supported a psychiatric outreach program in the rural area of Kabale. In the course of one month, about 280 patients are treated. The staff includes 1 psychiatrist, 1 psychiatric nurse, and 4 village health workers. Medication is purchased from local pharmacies. The staff provides diagnostic exams, medical treatments, and counseling. The patients arrive primarily on foot, often walking 5-10 miles. The JCK foundation funds the plan which includes medication at cost of $8000 per annum.

Background

In June-July 2022, a team of two students from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health worked in collaboration with staff from the JCK Clinic to conduct a preliminary evaluation of its mental health outreach services. Specifically, the evaluation’s objectives were to:

• Evaluate the JCK mental health outreach at three district health clinic locations, Muko, Hamurwa, and Bufundi.
• Assess the knowledge, perception, and other treatment options among caregivers of people with various mental disorders in southwestern Uganda – specifically Rubanda District.

The evaluation focused on conducting interviews with community health workers, patients and caregivers to identify how services were accessed, the perceptions of the impact of services on mental health symptoms and knowledge, community knowledge and stigma, and recommendations for service expansion. A comprehensive overview of JCK Clinic program, and the evaluation’s design, methodology and findings are documented in the Mental Health Outreach Final Report.

Recommendations from evaluation included:

• Increasing the number and capacity of health workers to provide individual counseling and education
• Programming to enable and support patient stability, including financial opportunities
• Infrastructure and maintenance of patient data system
• Diversify workforce, including social worker to support non-medical needs
• Increased clinic sites to address access and transportation challenges

In January-February 2023, one of the students returned to Kabale to initiate the development of a patient electronic medical record (EMR) system for the clinics. The database was designed collaboratively with JCK clinic staff using the open source OpenEMR platform. Over 300 individual patient data was entered into the database and a unique visit template was created for outreach visits.

Summer 2023

There are a number of interrelated projects that GMH Fellows can engage in with JCK Clinic:

1. Evaluation of the EMR database, including adoption, implementation and analysis of data. This can also include mapping of the workflow and interviews with patients
2. Assist with collection and documentation of materials, literature review for funding proposals
3. Support implementation of EEG neurodiagonstic program within the JCK Clinic.
4. Potential programs for specialized populations served by the clinic, including maternal mental health, children and adolescents, caregiver mental health, or others.

Project scopes and deliverables will be finalized through discussion with site supervisor, Mr. Centinary Gervase and the Fellowship’s staff team. Students should expect to be involved in engagement with clinic staff, health workers, and patients and present their learnings/findings to different community stakeholders and academic partners.

The Fellow will be expected to spend a minimum of 6 weeks in Uganda, in addition to preparation meetings and post-travel work to complete any deliverables. The Fellow will also participate in the Community Engaged Learning cohort, based at Harvard Chan.