Daymark’s Theory of Change for Perinatal Mental Health
Perinatal mental health is population mental health. This was the deciding factor in selecting this issue as the Daymark Foundation’s focus area in Women’s Mental Health, for at least 10 years. Our exploratory work found that not only are perinatal mental health issues more common than we think, but also that a mother’s mental health during pregnancy and postpartum is one of the greatest determinants of a child’s mental and physical health throughout their life course. By overlooking the mental health of mothers and birthing people, we are missing a crucial opportunity for the earliest possible intervention into the mental health of future generations.
As a foundation operating on a national level, our contribution cannot be to fund local perinatal mental health service delivery; instead, we seek out levers and opportunities to advance system- and population-level change. In order to shape our strategy, we started by defining a high-level, aspirational goal:
“Every individual and family in Canada experiences a mentally healthy pregnancy and postpartum period”
From there, we selected two population-level outcomes that we felt would measure whether this goal was being achieved:
In order to measure progress towards those outcomes, we identified five indicators:
Awareness: % of people who understand the importance of mental health during the perinatal period
Wellbeing: % of people who report positive mental health during the perinatal period
Identification: % of women and birthing people who are asked about their mental health during the perinatal period
Access to care: % of women with perinatal mental health concerns who receive effective and appropriate care/treatment
Equity: Prevalence rate of equity-deserving groups as compared to the general population
In addition to the direct impacts we want to see on individuals and families, we felt it was important to capture the systems changes that would be required to enable and sustain these impacts.
In order to establish an enabling system infrastructure, we identified six key outcomes:
As a foundation, we considered the most valuable and unique role we could play in achieving these population-level goals and outcomes. We have consolidated our strategy into three key pillars:
We also identified three cross-cutting principles that will underpin our efforts in the perinatal mental health space:
We are excited to have this clarity on the role we feel we can play in advancing perinatal mental health. At the same time, we remain open to learning and shifting course accordingly. Stay tuned for a future post on our strategic learning questions in perinatal mental health, and how these will shape our strategy moving forward.
We would love to hear your thoughts or feedback on our theory of change! Feel free to reach out to Vani at vani[at]daymarkfoundation.ca for a chat.
