ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: There is a significant push to change the trajectory of youth mental ill-health and suicide globally. Ensuring that young people have access to services that meet their individual needs and are easily accessible is a priority. Genuine stakeholder engagement in mental health system design is critical to ensure that system strengthening is likely to be successful within these complex environments. There is limited literature describing engagement processes undertaken by research teams in mental health program implementation and planning. This protocol describes the methods that will be used to engage local communities using systems science methods to mobilize knowledge and action to strengthen youth mental health services. METHODS: Using participatory action research principles, the research team will actively engage with local communities to ensure genuine user-led participatory systems modelling processes and enhance knowledge mobilisation within research sites. Ensuring that culturally diverse and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community voices are included will support this process. A rigorous site selection process will be undertaken to ensure that the community is committed and has capacity to actively engage in the research activities. Stakeholder engagement commences from the site selection process with the aim to build trust between researchers and key stakeholders. The research team will establish a variety of engagement resources and make opportunities available to each site depending on their local context, needs and audiences they wish to target during the process. DISCUSSION: This protocol describes the inclusive community engagement and knowledge mobilization process for the Right care, first time, where you live research Program. This Program will use an iterative and adaptive approach that considers the social, economic, and political context of each community and attempts to maximise research engagement. A theoretical framework for applying systems approaches to knowledge mobilization that is flexible will enable the implementation of a participatory action research approach. This protocol commits to a rigorous and genuine stakeholder engagement process that can be applied in mental health research implementation.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Despite significant investment, mental health issues remain a leading cause of death among young people globally. Sophisticated decision analysis methods are needed to better understand the dynamic and multisector drivers of youth mental health. System modeling can help explore complex issues such as youth mental health and inform strategies to effectively respond to local needs and achieve lasting improvements. The advantages of engaging stakeholders in model development processes have long been recognized; however, the methods for doing so are often not well-described. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to describe the participatory procedures that will be used to support systems modeling for national multisite implementation. The Right Care, First Time, Where You Live research program will focus on regional youth mental health applications of systems modeling in 8 different sites across Australia. METHODS: The participatory model development approach involves an iterative process of engaging with a range of participants, including people with lived experience of mental health issues. Their knowledge of the local systems, pathways, and drivers is combined with the academic literature and data to populate the models and validate their structure. The process centers around 3 workshops where participants interact and actively engage in group model-building activities to define, refine, and validate the systems models. This paper provides a detailed blueprint for the implementation of this process for mental health applications. RESULTS: The participatory modeling methods described in this paper will be implemented at 2 sites per year from 2022 to 2025. The 8 selected sites have been chosen to capture variations in important factors, including determinants of mental health issues and access to services. Site engagement commenced in August 2021, and the first modeling workshops are scheduled to commence in February 2022. CONCLUSIONS: Mental health system decision makers require tools to help navigate complex environments and leverage interdisciplinary problem-solving. Systems modeling can mobilize data from diverse sources to explore a range of scenarios, including the impact of interventions in different combinations and contexts. Involving stakeholders in the model development process ensures that the model findings are context-relevant and fit-for-purpose to inform decision-making. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/32988.
ABSTRACT
In order to increase the material throughput of aligned discontinuous fibre composites using technologies such as HiPerDiF, stability of the carbon fibres in an aqueous solution needs to be achieved. Subsequently, a range of surfactants, typically employed to disperse carbon-based materials, have been assessed to determine the most appropriate for use in this regard. The optimum stability of the discontinuous fibres was observed when using the anionic surfactant, sodium dodecylbenzene sulphonate, which was superior to a range of other non-ionic and anionic surfactants, and single-fibre fragmentation demonstrated that the employment of sodium dodecylbenzene sulphonate did not affect the interfacial adhesion between fibres. Rheometry was used to complement the study, to understand the potential mechanisms of the improved stability of discontinuous fibres in aqueous suspension, and it led to the understanding that the increased viscosity was a significant factor. For the shear rates employed, fibre deformation was neither expected nor observed.
