PH Safe Spaces: Mental Health Communities+App

According to research, there has been a nearly 100% of interviewed mental health professionals in the Philippines reported an increase in the number of  anxiety-related and depressive disorders in the Philippines in 2023. There is also an increase in suicide rates among Filipino youth. On top of this, there are only 3 mental health professionals for every 100,000 Filipinos, according to the Philippine Department of Health.

This increase in cases coupled with a shortage of mental health professionals is a mental health crisis waiting to happen. The timeframe to train and develop new mental health professionals is long and the increasing trend cannot be abated without an intervention. This supply and demand conundrum in the Philippines is the problem that we are trying to solve.

The Philippines is not alone in this problem. According to the World Health Organization, there has been a 13% rise in mental health conditions in the last decade (to 2017). Unfortunately, the median government health expenditure that goes to mental health is less than 2%.

Our solution is PH Safe Spaces Communities+App, a community-led and community-based intervention program powered by an app for training, monitoring, evaluation and referral. 

The PH Safe Spaces Communities program aims to supplant the lack of mental health professionals by training and deploying lay persons to deliver professionally designed mental health condition prevention programs and psychological first aid (PFA).

The program is implemented and delivered by a network (PH Safe Spaces Network) of member community-based organizations. The member-organizations are the ones who do communications and marketing to offer the service to local beneficiaries.

The program utilizes an app (PH Safe Spaces App) to monitor the data of beneficiaries, refer them to services, deploy training programs via an LMS module, and store data for analysis and evaluation. The app is powered by AI to deliver smart 24/7 services such as PFA and referral and data is stored in a blockchain to protect client personal data and medical information.

The solution serves and benefits people who have mental health conditions, specifically those coming from marginalized communities such as the LGBTQIAP+ communities, people with disabilities, and people living HIV who have even less access to mental health services.

As the general population is already underserved, the stigma and discrimination experienced by the population groups above further prevent them from being guaranteed of access to services, even if they are usually the ones who need them urgently.

The solution will fill a gap between the target beneficiary and the mental health professional by providing ancillary lay services in a safe and stigma-free environment to ensure that the client stays in the continuum of care, instead of falling out due to lack of gap-bridging measures.

The Red Whistle has been operating since 2011 and organized formally since 2015. The Red Whistle was founded in response to a growing number of new HIV infections in the Philippines. As an HIV organization, we understand public health and the role that stigma plays in preventing clients from accessing services.

In 2020, we recognized that we need to talk a more holistic approach to HIV advocacy. We started to see an increase in mental health conditions among persons living with HIV and the LGBTQIAP+ population and we decided that we needed to expand our advocacy to include mental health and stigma-free healthcare. 

Being members of the LGBTQIAP+ communities ourselves, we want to ensure that the programs we are developing for the communities we serve have their inputs from the design all the way to implementation and evaluation. 

PH Safe Spaces is an example of this community engagement. This intervention is a program that is designed and implemented by a local community which has shown promise and results. The Red Whistle decided to partner with the local community that designed this and empowered them to bring the program to Metro Manila, which is the Philippines largest metropolitan area. This idea is entirely from the community and we want to highlight the power of local innovation and adaptation by supporting and promoting this program with the help of Solve.

180 individuals in 3 cities.

Aside from fundraising, we aim to leverage on artificial intelligence and machine learning to ensure an 24/7 deployment of mental health first aid. We also want to explore the use of blockchain technology to protect the sensitive personal data and medical information of our participants.

We are also applying to Solve to meet potential app development partners for our intervention.

PH Safe Spaces: Mental Health Communities+App

Philippine Safe Spaces or PH Safe Spaces is a community-based lay mental health intervention program for young Gen-Z and millennial persons, specially those who belong to the LGBTQIAP+ community supported and empowered by an app.

PH Safe Spaces has two components: 1) Physical spaces in local communities holding regular monthly in-person events. 2) A common online space via a native app or web app shared by all local communities for analytics, referrals, training, learning and development.

Background

There has been an increase in the number of new cases of mental health illnesses in the Philippines in the last few years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Sources: https://news.abs-cbn.com/spotlight/11/17/22/mental-health-issues-rise-among-filipino-youth)

There are only 3 mental health professionals for every 100,000 Filipinos (https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1684893/just-3-mental-health-pros-per-100k-pinoys-doh-training-more). The shortage in qualified mental health professionals is keeping the cost of mental health services high. Cost, along with stigma, is one of the top reasons why Filipinos are not seeking mental health services, even if they know they need it (https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1758682/cost-stigma-keeping-filipinos-off-mental-health-services)

PH Safe Spaces' Innovative Approach

Faced with this human resource shortage and with a lack of significant financial investments from the public sector, PH Safe Spaces aims to leverage on the following strategies to address the issue in an innovative manner:

1. Locally-based and community-led interventions: PH Safe Spaces Communities are envisioned to be a membership network of autonomous but interdependent locally-based programs that are delivered by community-based organizations that are familiar with their local mental health situations and have the trust of their target beneficiaries.

2. Public-private partnerships: PH Safe Spaces member organizations are private non-government organization (NGOs) that are highly encouraged to tap locally available funding opportunities such as corporate partnerships and local government grants. PH Safe Spaces will also partner with the Philippine Mental Health Council to ensure that PH Safe Spaces initiatives contribute to the national goals and objectives on mental health.

3. Leveraging on AI for Mental Health: For many mental health situations, time is of the essence and spells the difference between life or death. While psychological first aid training can provide an immediate response to an emergency mental health situation, sometimes no one is available to deliver it. This is why PH Safe Spaces will leverage on AI to ensure that there is a 24/7 Mental Health Emergency Psychological First Aid available to Filipinos who need it. 

4. Lay Prevention is Better than No Cure: Given the shortage of mental health professional at all stages of intervention, PH Safe Spaces aims to halt and reverse the increase in new mental health cases by focusing on lay prevention, that is, training non-medical persons to deliver appropriate mental health services to people who are eligible and who need them, and to refer them to the appropriate mental health professional if necessary.

5. Blockchain for privacy and confidentiality: PH Safe Spaces shall use block chain technology to store confidential client information, to ensure compliance with Philippine laws on personal data privacy and medical data confidentiality.

Impact Goals for 2024: Reduce the rate of increase in the number of new reported cases of preventable mental health illnesses by half (e.g. anxiety and depression from 97% to 48% increase).

1. COMMUNITY REACH: Reach and serve 10,000 individuals through in-person community programs by creating a PH Safe Spaces Community in 30 different cities or municipalities.

2. ONLINE REACH: 30,000 more individuals by rolling out the PH Safe Spaces app.

3. REFERRAL: Refer 75% of the individual requests for referral to professional mental health service providers.

4. HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT: Graduate 100 Psychological First Aid providers through the PH Safe Spaces app's LMS pilot program.

Impact Goals for 2028: Reverse the increasing trend in the number of new reported cases of preventable mental health illnesses (e.g. from increasing rate to zero or decreasing rate).

1. COMMUNITY REACH: Reach and serve 1 million individuals through in-person community programs by creating 300 PH Safe Spaces Communities nationwide.

2. ONLINE REACH: Reach 3 million individuals through the PH Safe Spaces app.

3. REFERRAL: Successfully refer 95% of the individual requests for referrals to professional mental health service providers. 

4. HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT: Graduate 1,000 Psychological First Aid providers through the PH Safe Spaces app LMS.

5. INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION: Expand the program to the five countries in the Southeast Asian region.

Targets and Indicators

1. COMMUNITY REACH: 

No. of attendees per activity: Attendance taken every activity using the app.

No. of unique individuals reach per year: Analysis of aggregated annual data using the app.

No. of member organizations recruited or organized: Validated through partnership agreements  signed.

Qualitative feedback: Collected using online forms in the app.

2. ONLINE REACH:

No. of app users: native app data

Average use time: app data

Average no. of users per day: app data

Engagement rate: app data

3. REFERRAL:

No. of partner referral service providers: Validated by no. of partnership agreements signed.

No. of successful referrals via the app: app data; can be validated by partner service providers.

4. HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT: Graduate 100 Psychological First Aid providers through the PH Safe Spaces app's LMS pilot program.

No. of individuals who have completed the Psychological First AID LMS Course: app data

No. of Psychological First Aid services offered by trained providers: app data

The Immediate Problem: There is an almost 100% increase in anxiety-related and depressive disorders year on year and there are no existing standard mental health intervention program for people who need it most because of lack of mental health professionals.

Immediate Activities & Outputs: Initial activities of the solution aim to deliver three main outputs, which all contribute to fill the gap in the mental health response.

1. Network of PH Safe Spaces Communities: Main body through which all the work for the solution is coordinated.

2. PH Safe Spaces Member Organizations: Main actors that reach beneficiaries and deliver the community programs. 

3. PH Safe Spaces Community Programs: Main intervention that aims to prevent the rise of new mental health disorders and refer beneficiaries to professional services.

4. PH Safe Spaces App: Online hub that is meant to an online mode of program delivery, a monitoring and evaluation support tool for the network, organizations, and clients, and a hub for the learning management system. 

5. PH Safe Space Training Program: A human resource development program that aims to train new mental health professionals through an LMS system in order to fill the gap needed in the mental health response.

Longer Term Outcomes:

By delivering the outputs, it is expected that more people will be reached by a preventative mental health intervention, increase awareness of mental health, increase referrals to mental health professionals, improve prognosis, and increase treatment success rates.

Long Term Impact:

With the confluence of these outcomes, we expect a reversal of the present increasing trend in new cases of mental health disorders by 2028.

CORE TECHONOLOGIES

Leveraging on AI for Mental Health

For many mental health situations, time is of the essence and spells the difference between life or death. While psychological first aid training can provide an immediate response to an emergency mental health situation, sometimes no one is available to deliver it. This is why PH Safe Spaces will leverage on AI to ensure that there is a 24/7 Mental Health Emergency Psychological First Aid available to Filipinos who need it. 

Blockchain for privacy and confidentiality

PH Safe Spaces shall use block chain technology to store confidential client information, to ensure compliance with Philippine laws on personal data privacy and medical data confidentiality.

The solution team is a network of nonprofit organizations and organizations that are not yet registered.

The core team members are:

1. Metro Manila Safe Space (registered as TRW ORG. INC.), based in Makati City, Philippines;

2. Iligan Safe Space, not yet registered, based in Iligan City, Philippines;

3. CDO Safe Space, not yet registered, based in Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines; and,

4. La Union Safe Space (registered as iECHO Advocacy Support Group), based in San Fernando City, La Union, Philippines

All the solution team member organizations are volunteer-run, non-profit organizations. As volunteer organizations, we do not look at race, gender, ethnicity, or religion when accepting members. As long as they are willing to work and contribute to our common goal, they are welcomed, supported, respected, and valued. 

Practically all our members and beneficiaries come from marginalized communities, such as the LGBTQIAP+ community, people with lived mental health experience, people living with HIV, and urban poor communities. Inspired by the GIPA (greater participation of people living with HIV) principle of "Nothing about us without us", we ensure that our program are participatory from the design stage all the way to the implementation stage.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are the essence of the solution that we are proposing. In a world full of inequities, people's suffering manifest through mental health disorders. It is therefore incumbent upon us to ensure that the work that we do leads not only to a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace or team, but to a world that embodies all these principles and ideals as well.

Segments: 

Beneficiaries: People with lived mental health experiences

Customers: Local government units, local businesses, other community-based organizations who believe that an investment in mental health is beneficial to the community.

Type of Intervention: Community-based mental health programs, with an online delivery option

Value proposition: 

Beneficiary Value Proposition: Access mental health services for free, through a community that you are comfortable with.

Customer Value Proposition: Reduce costs in delivering a mental health program through partnership with community-based organizations.

Channels: In-person community events; PH Safe Spaces app.

Key Resources: PH Safe Spaces member organizations' network, brand equity of member organizations.

Key Activities: Recruiting member organizations; partnering with local government units; partnering with businesses; Organization program activities; app development; training and mentoring; program monitoring and evaluation

Partners & Key Stakeholders: local government units, local businesses, Philippine Department of Health

Cost Structure: Staff; Activities; App development and maintenance; Data Analytics; Research; Communication

Surplus: International Expansion

Revenue: Local government grants (30%); business sponsorships (30%); private individual donations and fundraising (20%); international grants (20%)

We plan to obtain funding through the following revenue streams:

1. Local government grants (30%): Since health is a function devolved to local governments, we expect around 30% of our funding to come from local governments through local government service contracts or grants to nonprofit organizations.

2. Business sponsorships/corporate social responsibility (30%): The private sector in the Philippines is active in corporate social responsibility and we expect to obtain 30% of the revenues from CSR partnerships or business sponsorships

3. Private individual donations, crowdfunding or fundraising (20%): We target to supplement the first two with private individual donations, crowdfunding, or fundraising, including the sale of merchandise.

4. International grants (20%): While we want to reduce reliance on international grants, we want to keep a 20% space allocation in case domestic funding sources are unable to cover our operational needs.

The solution team member organizations have been to obtain grants and sponsorships in the last four months:

1. Iligan Safe Space won a Php 20,000 (USD 400) grant from the Ten Accomplished Youth Organizations (TAYO) Awards in March 2023.

2. The Red Whistle was able to obtain Php 150,000 (USD 3,000) in sponsorships for its recent activity in April 2023.

3. Iligan Safe Spaces, The Red Whistle, and iEcho Advocacy are in talks with the local government units of Iligan City, Taguig City, Makati City, and the Province of La Union for accreditation and eligibility to be members of the local health councils in order to obtain long term funding. 

4. The Red Whistle, having been a registered organization for more than 8 years, has received more than USD 50,000 in grants, donations, and sponsorships to implement its programs.