We've revived an old EENet Connect feature: Regular interviews with different people doing interesting work in Ontario's mental health and addiction system!
This month's 'A Day in the Life of...' features @Registered Member Narrandes, a Knowledge Translation Specialist at CAMH. Read our interview with Renira below...
Q: What’s your role in the mental health and substance use system?
Trying to bridge the gap between research and practice in the field of child and youth mental health. I'm the Knowledge Translation (KT) Specialist for two research centres at CAMH: the Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression and the Margaret and Wallace McCain Centre for Child, Youth & Family Mental Health. Both centres have a strong KT mandate, resulting in this unique position in which I am responsible for coordinating the Centres' KT strategies across four domains (tools, activities, partnerships and communication channels). I get a LOT of questions about what knowledge translation is. 'Tis one reason why I developed this video: What is knowledge translation? Spoken word poem.
Q: What do you most like about your work?
The variety of projects I get to work on--and in different capacities. I have a background in journalism, occupational therapy and public health, and I find myself using skills from all three in my work. I also really enjoy working with different stakeholders, especially youth!
Q: What are you working on this week?
Here's what I did yesterday:
- 9:00 a.m. Met with a small team about developing a self-harm/suicide decision aid tool for primary care and frontline clinicians who work with youth.
- 10:30 a.m. Met with a colleague to discuss developing an international networking meeting series
- 11 a.m. Met with an implementation team about a project we are working on to implement a youth depression and anxiety care pathway with a family health team and community mental health service in Collingwood.
- 12:30 p.m. Checked in with our youth team to help prep for a meeting later this evening
- 2:00 p.m. Checked in with one of my teams to debrief our last Speaker Series event and plan for the next one.
- 3:00 p.m. Caught up on emails about our upcoming suicide prevention conference. Looked at how we can simplify our Centres' evaluation strategies.
- 4:00 p.m. Met with Youth Engagement Initiative team to review a video script.
- 5:30 p.m. (Do not usually work this late, but need to be flexible when working with youth!) Consulted the Youth Advisory Group about an online tool we are building
Q: Is there something you wrestle with regularly?
Time (lack thereof). The thing about KT is there are so many interesting ideas to explore. An animated education video? Yes, let's do it! An online tool for primary care providers? Yes, let's make it! A big conference? Yes, let's plan it! A storytelling training session for youth? Yes, I'm already prepping! Wait. It's 5pm already? (The items above are actually complete; it sounds like a lot all scrunched up in one paragraph, but what you're not seeing are all the items on my list that have been delayed or, sadly, aborted). Good KT takes time, especially when working with multiple and diverse stakeholders.
Q: What’s something most people don’t know about you?
Probably better to keep it that way (kidding!). I was born in South Africa. I'm a professional storyteller/storytelling coach. I have accumulated many interesting travel stories, including: a) a murder in my Cape Town apartment; b) a return to Canada in the middle of winter to discover the car that my friend was supposed to run every 2 weeks for 3 months had actually been towed and impounded shortly after my departure; c) a taxi ride in San Francisco that was actually not a taxi and a resultant drop off in an area that an eventual real taxi driver said I really should not be in; d) a white and gold emergency Canadian passport; e) many others!
