Service-user mental health quality tool
Official title: Ensuring Quality in Psychological and Mental Health Services - Service User Quality Assessment EQUIP-SU
Funded at George Washington University · NIH-11180386 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project will co-create a short checklist that people who use mental health services in low- and middle‑income countries can use to rate and report the quality of the care they receive.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | George Washington University NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Washington, United States) |
| Project start | September 2, 2024 |
| Project end | July 31, 2027 |
| Funding year | 2025 |
| Award (this year) | $430,040 |
| NIH project number | 4RF1MH137346-02 |
| Project ID | NIH-11180386 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates are people with lived experience of mental health conditions who currently use or recently used primary‑care or community mental health services in low‑ or middle‑income countries.
✕Less likely to help
People who do not use mental health services or who only receive highly specialized inpatient psychiatric care in high‑resource settings are unlikely to directly benefit from this project.
What this research studies
You and other people who use mental health services will help design a simple tool alongside caregivers, health managers, and policy makers. The tool will ask about concrete items like provider communication, privacy of clinical spaces, availability of medications, referrals for psychological care, and patient education materials. Patients will complete the tool in primary care and community settings where non‑specialists deliver mental health services, and the team will pilot and refine it based on user feedback. Collected ratings will be shared with local managers and policy makers to guide service improvements.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could give patients a clear, patient‑created way to identify problems and push for better communication, privacy, medication access, and referrals in local mental health services.
How similar studies have gone: Patient‑reported experience measures and co‑creation approaches have shown promise in improving services, but applying a standardized, user‑created quality tool for non‑specialist mental health care in low‑resource settings is relatively new.
Where this research is happening
-
George Washington University
Washington, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Kohrt, Brandon Alan — George Washington University
- Study coordinator: Kohrt, Brandon Alan
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.