AICAFMHA:
promoting mental health for young Australians
Australian Infant, Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Association Ltd
ABN 87 093 479 022
Discussion List Topic:
Pooling research groups via the internet
Late last month Alistair Campbell noted the potential for the various CAMHS services who are using standardised clinical outcomes measures to do some collaborative research that might involve some data pooling. I thought it might be interesting to explore this a bit further, perhaps by discussing potential research questions that might be amenable to this approach. The kinds of questions I think might be appropriate revolve around innovative practice and whether efforts at quality improvement translate into improved outcomes. An example could be efforts to enhance early intervention - does earlier intervention really result in improved clinical course for clients of ordinary CAMHS services? Can we prevent the onset of chronic illness? What aspects of early intervention practice are critical for achieving improved outcomes. You would need a lot of participants to explore these questions, and variations in practice and differential success in achieving early intervention. The data set required has multiple levels - individual clients nested within services. You would need to use use Hierarchical Linear Modeling analysis techniques to adjust for the problem of non-independence of scores for clients within particular service settings. Any interest in this one? Penny Mitchell Project Manager Primary Care Partnerships Evaluation & Primary Mental Health Community Health Unit Department of Human Services Level 11, 555 Collins St Melbourne 3000 Ph 9616 8307 Fax 9616 8277 Email penny.mitchell@dhs.vic.gov.au |
| Submitted: Fri 22nd Feb 2002 |
Hi All, this is part of an ongoing conversation between myself and Penny Mitchell. She suggested that it might be worth psoting some of what we have been discussing on to the list. Essentially we are talking about the issue of forming cooperative research groups within CAMHS teams throughout Australia so that we can harness some of the research effort that is currently occuring in isolation. I have been exploring a web site development tool called Zope which is designed to allow the development of just this type of site and the following is something of what Penny and I have been talking about... We wonder if there are others who would be interested in developing this idea further? Alistair Campbell
Hi Pam, I would agree that my interest in the technical sometimes leads me to forget about the direction. Interestingly, for me anyway, the purpose of a "pool" web site would be to provide a facility where individuals and teams could 'meet' to discuss and post ideas about research to facilitate the development of a remote/virtual research team. A fellow in the US, Andrew Ho, has developed a Zope site called OIO("Open Infrastructure forOutcomes") which is essentially a build of the idea. It is based on a Unix OS which am only just becoming familiar with so I can't say that I have had a good look at it. But it includes the idea of online research protocols, discussion places for research ideas and tracking, and online data entry. The address is http://www.txoutcome.org/ if you would like to have a look. My interest is in outcomes from clinical interventions and, at this point in time, I think that we really need to be focusing on the development of a valid, reliable, and easy to use battery of outcomes assessment tools. The work by Nurcombe et.al. has identified the sorts of things we need to be trialing but it does not seem to me that there is any inclusive plan to develop these tools. So perhaps one strand to this should be to pick up the research plan that came out of their report and trial the various measures. I would be particularly interested in developing a cheaper alternative to the CBCL as I don't belive it is an appropriate tool for routine outcome assessment in the clinical setting. Alistair -----Original Message----- Hi Alistair This approach to communication and data management sounds exciting and definitely worth exploring. What you are talking is horse and cart stuff which is great but I think we first need to talk about what we are wanting to transport, where we want to take it, and what we want to do with the product when we get it there. This is what the funding bodies would want to know. Can we identify and agree on some important research questions that require a collaborative data pooling approach? It would be essential to get interested parties together and talking, and developing trust, and developing a rigorous research design, using more traditional methods of communication before we build an innovative data management system. The kinds of questions I am interested in revolve around innovative practice and whether efforts at quality improvement translate into improved outcomes. An example could be efforts to enhance early intervention - does earlier intervention really result in improved clinical course for clients of ordinary CAMHS services? Can we prevent the onset of chronic illness? What aspects of early intervention practice are critical for achieving improved outcomes. I'll send this question out to the list and see if anyone is interested in talking further. Penny |
| Submitted: Fri 22nd Feb 2002 |
| I would be interested in helping with this project -
particularly the web side. Philip Benjamin |
| Submitted: Mon 25th Feb 2002 |
| I wonder if people know about the National
REsearch Partnership for Development, Health and Wellbeing, which I think has similar
goals to what Alistair and Penny are seeking to achieve. There was a report of the
inaugural meeting in the Winter editiion of Family Matters last year. George Patton, Steve
Zubrick, Michael Sawyer and others from the mental health arena are involved.
It would be good for linkages to be established between the two groups in order to try and
avoid reinventing the wheel. Fiona Stanley, who is chair of the group, has been very
influential in the PM's thinking on these issues. It is great that people are thinking along the same lines - the need for data pooling, cross-institutional and cross-discliplinary research cooperatives. The Partnership is in its very early days and apart from catalysing the formation of the group that ended up being the preferred tenderer for the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and the Health Inequalities Research Collaboration, child, youth and families network has no other concrete outcomes apart from getting an establishment grant from the Ian Potter Foundation. It would be good if either or both Penny and Allistair made contact with Fiona Stanley, because I think the web-based approach to sharing ideas that you are talking about is a great idea. Graham Vimpani |
| Submitted: Mon 25th Feb 2002 |
Just a thought about this. Do we need to start a new discussion within the AICAFMHA group for those of us who would be interested in following this up? Or should I, or someone else, just make a new group in Yahoo and we can post in there? |
| Submitted: Mon 25th Feb 2002 |
Thanks for this Graham. Yes it sounds like the NRPDHW may be well placed to help take this sort of idea forward. I know a lot of hard work has gone into establishing this group and how hard it would be to start a new partnership completely from scratch. I guess at this stage we need to identify at least four or five people in CAMHS who are interested in working on the idea and who could contribute to making good decisions about what to do next. Alistair - can you tell us more about what is involved in setting up a ZOPE site? |
| Submitted: Mon 25th Feb 2002 |
Just to let people know. One of my long term plans when I moved to take up the Chair in Brisbane was to develop an Institute of CYMH Research. The ideas were to bring existing groups in Queensland together, to provide a climate for access to more funds, and to also provide a bottom up approach to assist clinicians to develop a culture of research thinking. I am in the process of writing a proposal, and have some beginning funding earmarked and/or planned. I had not considered a national group such as has been suggested, but I suspect we would be interested in assisting progress. best wishes Professor Graham Martin |
| Submitted: Mon 25th Feb 2002 |
| Hi allOne of the key aims
of AICAFMHA is to promote discussion on a range of topics pertinent to child and
adolescent mental health.
I would suggest that what we should do in the first instance is to continue to post information on this reserach area within the Discussion List rather than starting a new list. The problem with starting a new list apart from the administration is to ensure that there is enough people subscribed to make the discussion fruitful. If the list becomes overloaded with this topic, then and only then would I recommend us starting a new list which AICAFMHA would be happy to host if the demand required it. As indicated previously a national group has been convened to look at Outcome Measures for child and adolescent mental health under the chair of Professor Michael Sawyer. The group met in Sydney last Friday and I indicated the interest of the AICAFMHA Discussion List in respect to this topic. The Advisory Group agreed to me posting progress information on this topic on AICAFMHA website and Discussion List which I will do when the information is available. AICAFMHA has been delighted with the traffic on the Discussion List and would encourage subscibers on the list to keep the emails coming on the range of thoughtful topics that have been covered over the last few months!! Regards |
| Submitted: Tues 26th Feb 2002 |
Thanks for this encouragement Phil. I agree it's premature to take the conversation away from this forum at this stage. It is only a very new germ of an idea and it would be good to keep exploring it in a larger forum to give everyone with potential interest time to think about whether they may like to participate. It would be very beneficial to hear about the progress of the National Outcomes Measures for Child and Adolescent Health group sometime soon. |
| Submitted: Wed 27th Feb 2002 |
I agree that it is important that as many people as possible are involved in this conversation. My concern is that we shouldn't dominate the thread. I suppose there is a natural ecology to all this and the discussions which have sufficient interest will continue... I also think it would be good to use the list to give us all some information on where the outcomesproject(s) are up to. |
| Submitted: Thurs 28th Feb 2002 |
Alistair As soon as the material from Sydney is available I will put it up. Regards |
| Submitted: Thurs 28th Feb 2002 |
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