Mental Health Data Prize-Africa 2024 RFP Closed
The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), in collaboration with Wellcome, is launching the Mental Health Data Prize-Africa to foster transformative change in understanding anxiety, depression, and psychosis across Africa. This initiative seeks to fill critical knowledge gaps by awarding up to ten prizes of £200,000 each, alongside one year of funding. It invites innovators, researchers, and start-ups to collaborate on developing data-driven insights and scalable digital tools to enhance understanding of these mental health issues in the African context.
The prize aims to gather a diverse group of African participants who will engage in multidisciplinary projects using existing data to devise new solutions for diagnosing and treating anxiety, depression, and psychosis. These projects will contribute to understanding effective prevention, treatment, and management strategies, addressing the needs of those experiencing these conditions.
We encourage mental health researchers and scientists across Africa to leverage existing data to explore research questions related to these three conditions and to enhance understanding of their progression within the continent. The funding will support multidisciplinary approaches, including data science and implementation research, to accelerate targeted and sustainable mental health interventions. The focus will be on:
We encourage mental health researchers and scientists across Africa to leverage existing data to explore research questions related to these three conditions and to enhance understanding of their progression within the continent. The funding will support multidisciplinary approaches, including data science and implementation research, to accelerate targeted and sustainable mental health interventions. The focus will be on:
- Understanding complex systems, including social and structural determinants of mental health, to identify more targeted prevention, treatment, and care interventions.
- Evaluating the implementation of evidence-based, data-driven solutions.
- Ensuring meaningful community and partner engagement at every project stage.
The overarching goal of the Mental Health Data Prize-Africa is to produce scalable solutions that support mental health research and generate data-driven insights tailored to the priorities of the African population, while building data capacity on the continent.
Specific objectives include:
- Supporting trustworthy data science and transforming mental health research to address challenges related to anxiety, depression, and/or psychosis in Africa through collaboration.
- Creating tangible, scalable data-driven tools to enhance understanding and interventions for mental health in Africa.
- Developing insights that improve diagnosis, treatment, and care in mental health, facilitating decision support for clinicians, front line health workers, and policymakers.