Advancing Pedagogies to Promote Mental Health and Interprofessional Education

We launch Volume 9 of Pedagogy in Health Promotion with a compilation of papers focusing on two areas of timely significance in health promotion and public health education. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed great unmet need for addressing mental health, and also demonstrates the importance of interprofessional and crosssectoral approaches to dealing with complex public health problems. The articles in this Issue provide useful lessons for pedagogies to promote mental health and to develop student capacity to work in interprofessional teams. Lindsay et al. (2023) report on their qualitative study examining student views of the role of the university in fostering student mental health and suggested practices and policies to promote psychological wellbeing. Their findings indicate the need for both classroom and extracurricular supports. Prioritizing mental health and fostering connections and social support were important themes identified in interviews with students. Recommendations for how faculty can provide a more supportive teaching and learning environment included flexibility, manageable workloads, transparency and clarity in expectations, and ongoing communication with students. Trauma informed pedagogy is gaining recognition as a critical framework for addressing students’ mental wellbeing (Harper & Neubauer, 2021). Based on findings from a qualitative study, Friedman (2023) presents a model for how signature pedagogical practices can be combined with a trauma informed approach. Key components include clarity of instruction; “recognizing the moment” of student experiences with psychosocial challenges, and providing safe spaces to acknowledge and discuss them; faculty availability and flexibility; and creating empathetic connections. These findings echo those of Lindsay et al. (2023), reinforcing the lesson that supportive educational environments and teaching styles are essential elements for promoting student wellbeing. Developing effective training to deliver communitybased mental health programs is another important undertaking for health promotion professionals. Lapidos et al. (2023) present an approach for peer training in suicide prevention among military veterans. They provide a model for development of a community-based training program designed to fit into broader training experiences, thereby improving feasibility of implementation. A key lesson was the importance of consultation with a veterans’ group to help the project team create a training approach consistent with local community needs and priorities. The next section of this Issue includes papers focusing on pedagogical approaches to promoting interprofessional collaboration, a required element of most health sciences education. These articles examine experiential learning projects for teams of students from various professional schools including public health, nutrition, nursing, other health sciences, social work, and library science. Garcia et al. (2023) describe a program for public health and nutrition students from underrepresented groups that aims to provide opportunities for research training, professional development, and mentorship. Graduate students attending a Hispanic-serving institution participated in a comprehensive interdisciplinary fellowship program focusing on community-based intervention research to address Latino childhood obesity. The authors note that the program serves as a model training platform for application of National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in health and health care. The Longitudinal Interprofessional Family-Based Experience (LIFE) program was developed to address the need for ongoing interprofessional experiential learning opportunities among health sciences students (Mattison et al., 2023). The curriculum comprised six modules over an 11-week period, covering such topics as team work, applying a social ecological and social determinants 1151181 PHPXXX10.1177/23733799221151181Pedagogy in Health PromotionMerzel editorial2023