Partner Linkage Tool for the Team Grants: Strengthening Resilient & Equitable Public Health Systems (STEPS)

Digital transformation of health systems for rapid responses to public health emergencies:

• Frontiers | It's late, but not too late to transform health systems: a global digital citizen science observatory for local solutions to global problems
• Frontiers | Inverting social innovation to transform health system responses to climate change adaptation and mitigation in the global south

• Community representative
• Public health practitioner
• Researcher: early career, mid-career, senior, trainee
• Decision-maker/policy-maker

• Community sector (community-based, non-profit, non-governmental organizations)
• Indigenous community sector
• Public sector (government public health institutions)

Welcome!

We are seeking collaborators for a proposed research project evaluating the Becoming Project—a national, community-led, trauma-informed public health intervention developed by Becoming Institute Inc. Our area of interest lies in strengthening public health system resilience and equity through upstream, culturally grounded, and intersectoral approaches to trauma recovery in Afro-descendant communities.

Our work aligns with the STEPS initiative in the following ways:

Community Sector Role in Strengthening Public Health Systems: We are exploring how Black-led, Black-focused, and Black-serving organizations can operate as system-extenders within Canada's public health ecosystem. The Becoming Project embeds trauma recovery programming within community-based organizations and builds local infrastructure to increase access, coordination, and long-term sustainability of care.

System-Level Transformation Through Truth, Forgiveness & Reconciliation: Using our signature Becoming Method™, we are testing interventions that integrate personal and collective trauma recovery with community mobilization, service coordination, and policy advocacy. The model emphasizes equity, belonging, and systemic change.

Public Health Equity & Workforce Development: We are training trauma recovery specialists and youth/para-professional community advocates from across Canada, equipping communities with the capacity to deliver holistic mental health care while advancing new models of workforce integration within public health systems.

Multi-Level Evaluation & Knowledge Mobilization: Our evaluation strategy spans individual, family, and community-level impacts. It combines qualitative interviews, trauma symptom tracking, equity indicators, and visual ethnography captured through The Becoming Show—a documentary series highlighting lived experience and community transformation.

We invite collaboration with researchers, Indigenous and Afro-descendant partners, policy makers, and public health professionals interested in equity-driven, trauma-informed system design. We especially welcome partnerships that enhance participatory evaluation, intersectoral policy analysis, and Indigenous data sovereignty.

Becoming Institute Inc. is seeking collaborators to advance the implementation and evaluation of The Becoming Project—a national, trauma-informed public health initiative designed to address the root causes of intergenerational trauma in Afro-descendant communities. Over the past eight years, we have developed and validated the Becoming Method™, a structured, high-impact trauma recovery approach rooted in truth, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This method is ready for scale and now being embedded within a larger public health systems enhancement process through collaborative community round tables.

This funding opportunity provides a critical avenue to:

• Evaluate how the Becoming Method™ functions as a systems-level intervention
• Support the full integration of trauma recovery care into public health delivery networks
• Co-develop policies and practices that enable Black-led community organizations to operate as public health system extenders

We bring the following to this collaboration:

• A fully developed intervention model ready for implementation and evaluation
• A growing national network of community round tables, composed of Black-led, Black-focused, and Black-serving organizations
• Expertise in training trauma recovery specialists and para-professional youth advocates
• A multi-layered evaluation framework that includes individual, family, and community-level impact tracking

In-kind contributions include:

• Access to training and program materials
• Staff time for coordination, facilitation, and research support
• Use of evaluation and data collection tools
• Communications and outreach through our national platforms
• Space and staffing for round tables, focus groups, and pilot activities

We are eager to engage with academic researchers, policymakers, and community-based partners committed to equity-oriented, trauma-informed public health system transformation. This collaboration will help generate the evidence needed to support widespread adoption and policy alignment.

• Researcher: early career, mid-career, senior, trainee
• Decision-maker/policy-maker
• Public health practitioner

• Community sector (community-based, non-profit, non-governmental organizations)
• Public sector (government public health institutions)

• Researcher: early career, mid-career, senior, trainee
• Not-profit organization leader

• Community sector (community-based, non-profit, non-governmental organizations
• Indigenous community sector
• Public sector (government public health institutions)
• Public health emergencies & pandemic preparedness

1. Barriers to Accessing Reproductive and Sexual Health Services in Rural BC Research Question: What are the barriers rural women face in accessing reproductive and sexual health services in BC's Interior, and how do these barriers impact health outcomes? Why it matters: Rural areas often lack access to family planning, prenatal care, abortion services, and STI testing.

There's a growing body of evidence on this nationally, but BC’s Interior is underrepresented.

Possible angles:

• Transportation and distance to clinics
• Stigma in tight-knit communities
• Limited provider availability (esp. female or culturally safe practitioners)

• Community sector (community-based, non-profit, non-governmental organizations)
• Public health emergencies & pandemic preparedness
• Public sector (government public health institutions)
• Indigenous community sector

• Public sector (government public health institutions)
• Community sector (community-based, non-profit, non-governmental organizations)

Mental health and mental illness—and how Canada’s public healthcare system prioritizes support services—represent a critical system-level challenge for building resilient and equitable public health systems. Despite growing awareness, the public system continues to prioritize acute and crisis-based care over preventive, community-based, and long-term mental health supports. This misalignment not only contributes to worsening mental health outcomes but also reinforces inequities—particularly among low-income populations, racialized communities, and those living in rural and remote areas. This issue is directly tied to multiple public health system building blocks, including:

• Governance and leadership (e.g., how funding decisions prioritize acute over preventive care)
• Health workforce (e.g., lack of embedded mental health practitioners in community settings)
• Service delivery models (e.g., underinvestment in early intervention, digital supports, and integrated mental health care) Through this lens, our work will generate actionable evidence to reorient mental health service priorities in public and community-based systems—ensuring better outcomes, reduced disability, and a more sustainable and equitable public health system. We aim to evaluate and propose system-level solutions that address structural gaps in mental health service delivery, identify where equity is being compromised, and collaborate across sectors to build capacity in ways that improve resilience, access, and long-term population mental health.

• Public sector (government public health institutions)
• Public health emergencies & pandemic preparedness
• Community sector (community-based, non-profit, non-governmental organizations)

• Crisis and risk communication, including demonstrating trustworthiness, addressing mis/disinformation, and maintaining trust.
• trustworthy and responsible generative AI public health organizational policies
• guiding principles for the trustworthy and responsible use of generative AI in public health
• competencies needed for trustworthy and responsible generative AI use, including human oversight, equity-drive use, and collaborative design and implementation
• upskilling of the public health workforce related to public health communication and core competencies

• scientific lead for the Dephi technique for the renewal of the Core Competencies for Public Health in Canada Release 2.0
• developed a public health communication competency framework, including empirical research on competency integration and assessment in public health education and professional development in Canada, best practices for developing competencies in public health students and practitioners, and consensus-building for the competency statements
• extensive research on crisis and risk communication with a focus on trust
• teaches in MPH program at the University of Guelph; many graduate students interested in applied public health research

• Public sector (government public health institutions)
• Community sector (community-based, non-profit, non-governmental organizations)