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27/03/2008 - Submitted by: Tilia Bousios

Publisher: Managing Editor, Richard Wynne, Work Research Centre.
Distribution Date: 31/03/2008

Recent Developments in ProMenPol

Numerous activities are going on within ProMenPol these past few weeks: The first version of the database is online and it is growing day by day. At the same time more and more practitioners have announced interest in taking part in one of the different field trial types. There have also been significant developments at EU level. As a follow-up to the Green Paper on Improving the Mental Health of the Population of 2005, the Commission intends to organize on 13 June 2008 in Brussels an EU-high level conference on mental health, with the presence of both Commissioner Kyprianou and the President of the European Commission, Dr José Manuel Barroso. A so-called European Pact for Mental Health is planned for launch at this conference. The pact would be an intersectoral Declaration, expressing the willingness of members to work together in addressing mental health issues, based on a set of key principles for action. Pact members would also commit to contributing to the implementation of the Pact through providing input to a series of thematic conferences, which would develop plans for further action and would contribute to a Commission Proposal for a Council Recommendation on Mental Health (2009). The process would focus on four priority themes: prevention of suicide, mental health in youth and education, mental health in workplace environments, older people. Furthermore, certain horizontal priorities would be applied, among those: promotion of mental wellbeing and improving the knowledge base and availability of data.

Further details about the event will be made available in due time at:  ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determinants/life_style/mental/mental_health_en.htm  

Members of the ProMenPol consortium are in close contact with the Commission and actively involved in the preparatory work of this high level event. At the upcoming ProMenPol conference which will take place only a few days later those policy issues will also be discussed. However, the focal point of the next ProMenPol conference will be on the database and the field trials. More detailed information is given in the according articles below.

Field Trials and Registering for Participation

After the 2nd ProMenPol Conference the piloting phase in the ProMenPol context will start officially. Already a number of organisations from various fields already have expressed their interest to take part in the field trials.   If you also want to improve your service by means of mental health promotion, you can register to undertake a field trial.

Practitioners and organisations from the school, workplace or residences for older people settings have the unique possibility to run a ProMenPol field trial. Depending on the needs of the practitioners, ProMenPol offers several possibilities for field trials:

  • Field trial Type I: is a usability-test of the online database and toolbox of mental health promotion and protection instruments. The questionnaire will ask users – who have tested the toolboxes – about toolset’s utility, functionality and practicality for the organisation.
  • Field trials Type II: will document the experiences of implementing one of the tools practitioners have chosen from the toolset of mental health promotion instruments.
  • Because some organisations already have implemented such a tool, field trial Type III: is a standardised report on a tool which is already in use by the organisation in the course of an existing initiative. In addition we will ask them to report on its utility and practicality too.

Under the lead of the Research Institute of the Viennese Red Cross (FRK) the ProMenPol partnership is now preparing questionnaires and documentation for all field trial types.

In the meantime interested organisations can express their interest in undertaking a field trial. If you are interested, please send an e-mail to Gert Lang of the Research Institute of the Viennese Red Cross (gert.lang@w.redcross.or.at) and ask for the “expression of interest”-form.

For more detailed information about field trials please visit our homepage. There is also a marketing flyer available on that issue.

The ProMenPol Database and Toolkit - Accessing and Entering Tools

The major development in ProMenPol in recent months has been the creation of a database of tools for mental health promotion. These tools are targeted at the three settings of interest – schools, workplaces and older peoples’ residences. The database currently contains more than 200 tools in 3 languages – English, German and Finnish, though the number of languages will be increased in the near future.

These tools have been identified and described by the ProMenPol project team, but interested people from outside of the project also have the opportunity to add tools to the database. This involves becoming a registered user of the project website and then going to the toolkit area of the website to enter the details of your mental health promotion tool. Instructions on how to complete the pro-formas for tool descriptions are provided

An important feature of the tools database is that it is searchable in multiple languages. For example, if you are searching in English, the results of your search will produce tools in any of the languages in which tools are available. Similarly, a search in German or Finnish will produce results in all languages. 

Each tool in the database has a standard set of descriptors which can be seen in the screen print below:

Database Meta Data Sceen

In addition, you will be asked to describe the tool in terms of three distinct frameworks – a core set of the International Classification of Functioning (ICF), the International Classification of Disease version 10 and a Classification of health promotion actions that has been drawn up by the project team. This classification data is used for purposes of enhancing the searches that can me made on the database.

When your tool has been entered on the website it is then entered in a buffer where it is assessed by a member of the project team in order to ensure that the details of the tool have been entered correctly.<

The database of tools will be further developed over the next few months in order to produce the ProMenPol Toolkit. This will consist of a set of toolkits targeted at each of the three settings of interest to the project and will contain a recommended set of tools that will enable the user to undertake the full range of mental health promotion processes in their own organisation. It is expected that the first version of the ProMenPol Toolkit will be available by the end of May 2008.

A second version of the Toolkit will be produced before the end of the project in 2009. This will be an amended and enhanced version which will have been updated on the basis of feedback from the Field Trials which will run from June 2008 to September 2009.

The 2nd ProMenPol Conference

The next ProMenPol conference will take place on June 19th- 20th in Berlin at the offices of the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA).

This invitation only conference is especially aimed at mental health promotion practitioners who wish to undertake a ProMenPol field trial. The first version of the toolkit will be presented and participants will receive training on the effective implementation of tools. A second focus of the conference will be laid on policy issues. In this context ProMenPol is particularly interested on the practitioner’s perspective on the implementation of policy objectives. Where possible, topics will be discussed in interactive workshops.

Invitations will be sent out in the first part of April. If you wish to take part or find out more about the Conference, contact Katrin Zardo from BAUA.

 

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