Community Health Worker Training on 7 Cups!

I hope you all are well! I wanted to share some excellent news with all of you. Laura highlighted an initiative we are working with some leading universities in this post. Well, drum roll please, I can finally announce what weve been working on!

Check out this video and information here:

(one minute video)

We couldnt have gotten here without your work in the 7 Cups community as listeners and leaders in emotional support. Knowing that you, and hundreds of thousands of 7 Cups volunteers, have been so willing to train in active listening, participate in community support, and help others on the path, has inspired us to realize that we can do more to help many more in need. Thank you!

And here is the official announcement:

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Empower is a collaboration between GlobalMentalHealth @ Harvard and the 7 Cups Foundation. Our goal is to deploy a digital platform for building the worlds mental health care workforce. We are developing digital tools to ensure that this workforce has the clinical skills and competencies to deliver brief science-based psychological treatments for mental health problems. The goals of this initiative are aligned with the recommendations of the recent Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development (2018): to exponentially increase access to quality, cutting-edge psychological therapies for mood, anxiety, trauma related and substance use disorders globally.

7 Cups will design and build the digital platform using its expertise in app-based training of psychosocial therapies. The platform will include the tools developed by Sangath to train and supervise front-line workers in India. GlobalMentalHealth @Harvard will provide academic oversight to inform the content of the platform, assessments of clinical skills and competency, quality, and impact of the training on provider and patient outcomes. The initiative is guided by a panel of the worlds leading psychological treatment scientists and engages a research design group to standardize the methodology for digitizing curricula and competency assessments.

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If you click on the above video link or here, you can see that the trainings are provided by the worlds leading scientists. People like Vikram Patel (link to TED talk), Chris Fairburn, and David Clark - the founder of IAPT.

Okay, let me just pause for a minute and ask:

Can you believe it???!!!

This is pretty awesome and it means great things for our community. This is one way I imagine this working in the future:

1. A government health system - for a city, state, or country - signs up, and says wed like to utilize the training curriculum to build up our community health workforce (CHWs).

2. We then let listeners know - listeners can serve as CHWs online or offline if they live in the area or region.

3. Listeners can then choose to go through the training program (that will be on 7cups.com), pass the tests, engage in supervision, and can then receive payment for CHW services (these details need to be worked out with the different government systems).

The CHW training process will consist of 4 main parts:

1. Learn - complete the coursework

2. Assess - pass validated tests to earn certification

3. Deploy - engage in the support activities online and/or offline

4. Master - participate in peer and other supervision activities to increase competency, gain additional certifications, and give back by growing the community as a leader

We are very excited about this initiative. It has the potential to make a huge difference in the world - a very positive impact. We are currently looking for funders to help support this initiative as we do not want their to be any fees for people interested in taking the trainings and, as always, remain committed to removing all barriers to increase access and education. The funding of the initiative will happen through the 7 Cups Foundation, which is our relatively new nonprofit arm. You can learn more about it here: 7cups.org. This initiative was just announced on April 5th. We dont yet have a firm time table as to when specific items will be introduced. Ill keep you updated as things unfold.

Thank you again to all of you for walking on this journey with me. We all work very hard and sometimes, every once in a while, we get a major boost that helps propel things forward. This is one of those big steps that will enable us to help many more people. It is very exciting. That said, I believe that it is important to remember that this step and all future accomplishments are built upon the foundation weve all been working on for almost 6 years (!!!! - Hard to believe that it has been that long). I am very thankful for what weve been able to collectively accomplish and I look forward to walking this next leg of the journey with all of you.