Project Summary
The purpose of this proposal is to form the Identifying Depression through Early Awareness (IDEA) Women’s Health Coalition, which will organize those impacted by perinatal depression screening to engage in comparative effectiveness research (CER). In our previous perinatal depression research studies, we noticed a need for capacity building for providers and relationship building for patients to engage in health services research. The state of Illinois policy mandates perinatal depression screening. Although providers independently screen for depression during the perinatal period, patients have not received integrated care due to such barriers as the lack of access to screening results between providers, insufficient patient involvement in screening protocol designs, and disconnected primary and mental health providers. This Tier A project will build the IDEA Women’s Health Coalition, which integrates input from patients, researchers, mental health providers, and primary care providers to develop CER questions. We will accomplish two aims:
- Create a patient-centered coalition of patients, providers, and researchers to discuss avenues for CER.
- Establish a strategic infrastructure for the coalition to identify community partners.
To accomplish these aims, the proposed IDEA Women’s Health Coalition will build on existing relationships and create sustainable pathways for the aforementioned stakeholders to engage in CER. We will establish a working group and advisory board within IDEA. To maximize and sustain participation, the Tier A project will adopt the appreciative inquiry approach to enable stakeholders to reflect on prior research experiences, to set up shared goals, to identify research priorities, and to develop the initial research questions.