As violent conflicts, forced migration, and an increase in natural disasters sparked by climate change trigger rising humanitarian needs around the globe, a new initiative to understand how to better support the mental health of those affected is being launched at McGill University, thanks to a visionary gift from Flagship Pioneering Founder and CEO and Co-Founder and Chairman of Moderna, Noubar Afeyan, BEng'83, DSc'22, and his wife, Anna Afeyan Gunnarson.
The couple's gift to McGill of $2 million USD (approximately $2.7 million CDN) will support the launch of the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Implementation Research Program, housed at the University's School of Population and Global Health. It will be led by Jura Augustinavicius, an assistant professor at the School whose research focuses on mental health in the context of climate change and humanitarian crises.
"I would like to extend my gratitude to Anna and Noubar Afeyan for their generous gift to McGill, which reflects their long-standing commitment to humanitarian action," said McGill President and Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini. "This new program will provide exceptional research and learning opportunities for McGill students, and it will advance our global understanding of how to improve mental health supports for people living through terrible ordeals in crisis zones."
Humanitarian action is one of the key areas supported by the Afeyan Foundation, which the couple established in 2000.
Noubar Afeyan is the grandson of Armenian genocide survivors, and arrived in Montreal as a young refugee in 1975 when his parents fled Lebanon's civil war. He attended McGill, earning a degree in Chemical Engineering, then went on to MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to pursue his PhD studies. With a passion for innovation, Afeyan became a highly successful entrepreneur, and his company, Flagship Pioneering, has founded more than 70 breakthrough companies in life sciences, most notably Moderna, the developer of a ground-breaking mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
"As the world contends with the polycrisis of climate change, war, and economic turmoil, among other factors, the impact on humanity grows more stark and multiple approaches are needed," said Noubar and Anna Afeyan, Trustees, The Afeyan Foundation. "McGill's program to address the mental health and psychosocial support needs of impacted populations around the world is a critical element to improving the lives of the most vulnerable in a time of increasing turbulence."
The timing of the gift, and the launch of the program at McGill, comes at a moment when the world is grappling with an increase in the frequency and severity of both conflicts and natural disasters, many linked to, or exacerbated by climate change. This, Augustinavicius says, underscores the need for better, more integrated, supports for mental health in humanitarian zones. Current estimates suggest about 22 per cent of people in humanitarian zones - or more than one in five - experience a mental health condition.
"We're currently unable to meet those mental health needs - and they are only increasing with climate change risks in humanitarian settings. We're massively unprepared to deal with that," she said.
The five-year project aims to integrate mental health support into other programs delivered in humanitarian settings - such as education, economic support, protection, disaster risk management, or climate change adaptation - to reach more people. "One of the big challenges in our field is that mental health care is often delivered in silos," Augustinavicius said.
Mental health problems do not occur in isolation. They often occur, or are exacerbated, because of a failure to meet basic needs, she said. Particularly in humanitarian settings, people face a range of challenges: they're often fleeing conflict or environmental disaster. "All of that comes with an increase in needs. But when we deliver mental health services in those contexts in an isolated manner, we're only narrowly trying to address mental health problems, which may actually be a consequence of, or compounded by, the other things that are happening in people's lives. The goal of the program is to more holistically address needs and meet people where they are."
Three humanitarian settings around the globe will be chosen for the initial study, likely from Latin America, the Caucuses and Southeast Asia. Augustinavicius and her research team will work with humanitarian service providers and people with lived experience in those areas to co-design an integrated mental health response appropriate for each location. During the evaluation, the McGill team will assess whether the integrated models are effective in meeting mental health needs, and whether the programs can be properly implemented by the organizations on the ground.
The program will also provide training opportunities for students, postdoctoral fellows, and field staff, and will host an international humanitarian forum on psychological resilience.
"My hope for this project is that it really provides some inspiration and a model for the future in terms of how we can work in an integrated, inter-sectoral and an interdisciplinary way to address mental health and well-being in the context of increasing humanitarian needs globally," Augustinavicius said.
Augustinavicius expressed gratitude to the Afeyans for their generous support. "This is an area in which research, training and intersectoral-partnership building are absolutely needed and required. But it's also an area that has long been under-resourced and often neglected, particularly in certain traditional funding mechanisms, which is why this support means such a great deal."
