Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)Leveraging Scientific Expertise to Build an Ebola Toolkit for Psychosocial Interventions at the Acfas Conference

On May 29, 2019, amidst the Association francophone pour le savoir (Acfas) Congress – the largest francophone scientific conference in North America, the Government of Canada hosted a breakfast panel discussion on the topic of Ebola and its effect on the mental health of local communities.

Québec Science editor-in-chief, Marie Lambert-Chan, moderated the panel. The panelists included Dr. June Mary Cénat, Assistant Professor at the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Jean-Pierre Birangui, researcher at University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Stéphanie Maltais, PhD candidate at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa.

They discussed one of the research projects supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Rapid Research Fund for Ebola.

Panelists discussed the importance of learning from the survivors of past epidemics to better understand the implications of Ebola disease on the mental health of local communities. The goal of this work is to assemble a toolkit of psychosocial interventions that will improve the support and reintegration of survivors and their communities during and following an epidemic.