Bright Ideas: Annual Research and Evaluation Highlights at CMHA Ottawa

Learn about advancements in community-based mental health, housing and substance use healthcare at this free webinar for Mental Health Week. Recorded Friday, May 9, 2025, on Zoom.

Are you interested in learning about the latest advancements in mental health care at the community level? Do you enjoy educational material delivered in comprehensive and dynamic ways by the researchers themselves? Are you curious how students, frontline staff and managers, and service users work together to contribute evidence to the thriving field of community-based care?

Along with its partners—primarily the University of Ottawa and Carleton University—CMHA Ottawa is at the forefront of research and evaluation activities in mental health, housing and substance use healthcare at the community level, an often overlooked yet vital part of Ontario’s healthcare system. Featuring several live exhibitions from students and researchers, along with CMHA Ottawa staff and peers, and a rapid-fire series of presentations, Bright Ideas 2025 is knowledge mobilization at its finest; this webinar will leave you feeling inspired and optimistic about the future of mental health care.

Background:
The day-to-day work that takes place at CMHA Ottawa is innovative, impactful, varied and compelling. We work every day with eligible individuals in the Ottawa area that live with a mental illness and/or substance use disorder, many of whom are experiencing chronic homelessness, providing evidence-informed and person-centered programs and services that empower individuals and promote good mental health.

As a community-based agency, we provide outreach services, case management, housing, counselling, specialty services, training and more. This range of services makes our organization a suitable setting for important research and evaluation projects that will make lasting contributions to the field of mental health and addictions services.

Every year, our staff and clients work with students from the University of Ottawa—a proud official partner, Carleton University, Algonquin College, and others, on a variety of research and evaluation projects and clinical practice placements. These students play a critical role in supporting our capacity to engage in research, and they perhaps represent our future mental health clinicians and researchers.

This free, virtual event will feature collaborators from various disciplines as they describe the range of projects that they worked on with CMHA Ottawa during 2024-2025 fiscal and school year.

Presented by the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ottawa Branch (CMHA Ottawa) as part of CMHA’s Mental Health Week 2025.