Sana Ment

The Sana Ment educational programme promoted the design and implementation of health interventions linked to emotional wellbeing by and with students, in collaboration with educators, students, researchers, patient associations, politicians and companies.

It was promoted by IrsiCaixa's Living Lab for Health, in coordination with the Catalonia cluster of the Xplore Health educational programme, and with the collaboration of the European EnRRICH project.

It involved 15 pilot educational centres in Catalonia and 4 research centres and universities: the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, the Educational Research Group in Health Sciences of the Pompeu Fabra University, the Research Group in Mental Health and Social Innovation (SaMIS) of the University of Vic and the Research Group in Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona.

It follows the RRI quality criteria, inspired by the European models of Science Shops and Living Labs. It includes community-based participatory research (CBPR), open innovation and participatory governance.

Phases of the project

• Thematic selection: students choose the topic of stress and depression as a priority concern to work on (January 2015).

• Collective agenda of needs: students prioritise their interests and needs on the topic (January - April 2015).

• Contact with researchers and NGOs: co-design of RRI projects that respond to needs (September-December 2015).

• Community research: RRI projects are implemented in collaboration between researchers, students and teaching staff (January-May 2016).

• Collective final product: decalogue of recommendations on how to promote emotional well-being, defined with the participation of public health officials and patient associations (April-May 2016).

• Presentation of results at a conference at CaixaForum (May 2016).