After numerous video calls among the project consortium, it was clear that each partner country is sliding into national lockdown. These lockdowns were limiting domestic and international mobility, causing the consortium to make a decision to postpone the planned project meetings in South Africa until the situation stabilizes. Unfortunately, it is still unclear whether the project consortium will be able to implement any of the remaining face-to-face meetings.

What kind of actions has MEGA taken to tackle the damaged caused by COVID-19?

As a consortium that mainly represents the healthcare field, MEGA was in an advantaged position to understand the impending pandemic. Therefore, the MEGA consortium was prepared to implement some rapid changes in order to soften any possible damage caused by COVID-19. The first step was to ensure the safety of project participants and partners. This is why the MEGA consortium decided to cancel all physical meetings in Europe and Africa, transferring all the remaining project meetings to online platforms. Implementation of activities which were intended for the general public (e.g. seminars, trainings) was tackled by establishing tailor-made materials, which would replace the initially planned physical meetings and seminars.

The situation with piloting the MEGA mobile application was a bit more complicated, due to limited interaction with project stakeholders caused by the pandemic. As the MEGA app had to be tested in real-life settings by project stakeholders (nurses, clinical officers, etc.), the consortium could not use any digital tools or online platforms to replace the face-to-face testing period. However, the MEGA consortium strongly believes that the health of the primary healthcare specialist is more important than the overall project results. Fortunately, nurses in several South African and Zambian clinics were able to use the MEGA app while fulfilling their daily duties and, thus, the project was able to collect the necessary data.

What can MEGA and other KA2-projects/EU learn from the pandemic?

The pandemic period has been an excellent learning curve for both the funder and the beneficiaries. Communication during the lockdown period has shown that almost all partners have access to a solid internet connection and online tools. However, we have observed that consortiums (not only MEGA) are not advancing these tools as often as they could. Therefore while planning new projects, e-toolkits should be more commonly used.

As it is still quite difficult to predict when the current pandemic will end, consortiums need to advance the lessons learned and work on implementation strategies that are more reliant on different e-solutions. Fortunately, the MEGA consortium has already taken many necessary steps to become more virtual. Thus, project funder could collect these case studies and develop guidelines on how to develop a virtual working environment and how to shift work online.

The risk assessment will be more closely reviewed while preparing new projects. The future project consortiums have to practice out of the box thinking and be prepared for situations, which might not even happen. Therefore, also the funder should put more emphasis on risk assessment plans and closely review how the future projects are estimating possible risks. Project consortiums have to be ready to tackle unexpected issues.

For these reasons, the team at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg developed a train the trainer curriculum. The course covers mental health awareness, key facts about youth mental health and focuses specifically on helping nurses to identify signs and symptoms of depression in youth. The curriculum follows accepted adult professional learning principles and a blended learning approach.

During April and May 2019, we piloted the train the trainer curriculum with a class of German nursing sciences students at the HAW. The overall positive evaluation of the students and the trainers gave us constructive feedback for a further revision of the training. In July the revised material was piloted again by our colleagues at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein in a local clinic and we received valuable feedback.

The MEGA team at HAW is made up of two longstanding colleagues working alongside one another in the Department of Social Work. Gunter Groen, a psychologist and psychotherapist for adults, adolescents and children, holds a professorship of Psychology (clinical psychology and child psychotherapy) since 2010. His main teaching emphasis is on Clinical Psychology/Psychiatry and Developmental Psychology. As a qualified and licensed psychotherapist, he has longstanding experience in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy with children, adolescents, adults and families. He worked for several years as a therapist in a child and adolescent psychiatry clinic and in private practice. He has published a number of psychotherapy guidelines and intervention material, especially for depression in children and adolescents, that combines a science-based approach to the understanding of mental (ill) health with an emphasis on the meaning of recovery and a person-first approach. He has extensive research experience regarding the promotion of child and adolescent mental health in youth welfare services and clinical child psychology (e.g. integrated services for children with challenging behavioural and emotional problems; interprofessional collaboration between child psychiatry and youth welfare services; prevention of anxiety disorders; prevalence of mental disorders in adolescence, prevention of depressive disorders in adolescence, use of ‘suicide internet forums’ and pathways to mental health care for refugees).

Astrid Jörns-Presentati has been a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Work since 2013. Before she joined the HAW, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the University of Manchester and did her postgraduate studies in the Social Work Master’s program at the HAW. Her fields of expertise in teaching include undergraduate courses in developmental psychology, an interprofessional collaboration between mental health and child and youth welfare services and Recovery-oriented approaches in mental health. She has worked in a number of national and international research projects that focused on interprofessional collaboration between social work and child and youth psychiatry/psychotherapy and is currently pursuing her doctoral thesis with the same emphasis.

In the MEGA project, we are responsible for developing, piloting and conducting the train-the-trainer course for primary health care workers. Furthermore, we are responsible for monitoring ongoing activities in regard to a quality plan specifically developed for the MEGA project.