Mexico City’s Anahuac Institute of Public Health joined the Program on International Child and Adolescent Mental Health, initially founded by Drs. Donald Cohen and Mary Schwab-Stone of the Yale Child Study Center. The international research team is formed by Vladislav Ruchkin of Arkhangelsk, Russia (now at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden), Robert Vermeiren of Antwerp, Belgium (currently on faculty at the VU University medical center, the Netherlands), and Andrés Martin of Mexico City (now on faculty at the Yale Child Study Center).
ISPA joined the international multidiscilpinary research team in order to participate as a local counterpart to the Social and Health Assessment (SAHA) project, an international survey assessing risk and protective factors for adolescent problem behaviors. With this effort, Mexico joins eight other countries - Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Iran, Korea, Russia, Surinam, and the United States of America that have already collected the data, with five more countries to follow - Albania, Gambia, Japan, Lithuania, and Serbia.
ISPA has undergone implementation of SAHA in Mexico during 2004, 2005 and 2006, surveying more than 3,500 middle and high school students at public and private schools. Derived from multiple key informant interviews and focus group studies, the SAHA survey instrument was complemented with a set of questions dealing insecurity, kidnapping and robbery, issues which are of main concern in Mexico City.
Starting in March 2007, with the participation of five medical students from Vrije Universitat in Amsterdam, research interns from Anahuac University Medical School and from Harvard College, ISPA will conduct a third wave of SAHA at several public and private schools in Mexico. This time there will be close to 6,000 students participating, which will add interesting perspectives to our multi-national research. Data analysis promises interesting results that are being prepared for publication and to inform policy and local intervention programs. Using the new cohort of the Mexican SAHA, our team will aim to compare the effect and influence of socio-economic and cultural aspects on the social development and mental health of adolescents.
If you are interested in participating in a research internship in Mexico or learning more about SAHA in Mexico, please contact Arturo Cervantes, MD, MPH, DPH, Professor and Chair of Public Health, Anahuac Institute of Public Health, acervantes@anahuac.mx.