title: A population health framework for inner-city mental health.
abstract: Dealing with mental health problems in the inner city presents a major challenge to planners and service providers. Traditional mental health service-oriented interventions often prove ineffective due to the complexity of individuals' needs. This article argues that a population health framework can be used to identify critical risk and protective factors and facilitate more effective, upstream, population-based interventions for mental health problems in the inner city. A community report card is seen as a useful measure of key indicators at any point in time and of changes over time at the community or neighborhood level. A number of issues with regard to report card development are identified and discussed, as is the process of creating a report card, including key domains and the organization of findings.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. carol_strike@camh.net
authors.forename: Carol
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Strike
authors.forename: Paula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Goering
authors.forename: Donald
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wasylenki
mesh_terms: D002958:City Planning; D018672:Community Health Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000628:therapy*; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D009864:Ontario / Q000453:epidemiology; D012307:Risk Factors; D012940:Social Problems; D014504:Urban Health