A community-university research partnership led by School of Social Work faculty member Dr. Kathy de Jong has been awarded $1.6 million to help improve the lives of young people dealing with mental health, substance use and housing challenges in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The research project will be done in partnership with Choices for Youth, a non-profit organization that works with at-risk youth in our province.

The award is part of a larger investment of more than $30 million over four years aimed at strengthening and expanding research within the Integrated Youth Services Network of Networks (IYS-Net) across Canada.

The initiative’s funders are the Government of Canada, through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Indigenous Services Canada, and its partners, the Graham Boeckh Foundation and Bell-Graham Boeckh Foundation partnership.

A cross-disciplinary endeavour, the research team at Memorial University also includes Drs. Josh Rash and Nick Harris, both associate professors in the Department of Psychology; Dr. Maisam Najafizada, associate professor of health policy, Faculty of Medicine; and Dr. Tsering Dolkar Watermeyer, assistant professor, School of Social Work.

Read more in the Gazette and via Memorial's media release.