Key Project Activities:
Progress Made:
Community Contacts – Following up on Alexander’s project update from last week, we had Sam interviewing Dr. Mike Lamb, Libby meeting with Aashna, and Alex reaching out to Robert Melara.
Sam’s interview with Dr. Lamb went well, but not much information was provided as he wasn’t too informed about Thrive NYC. Although Dr. Lamb wasn’t too promising as a community contact, Libby’s meeting with Aashna was helpful. Aashna provided a huge list of clinics and community organizations for us. Along with that, she also gave her thoughts about Thrive NYC and expanded about her own project, Gleam. With the information provided by Aashna, we then decided to look into digital therapy. As for reaching out to Dr. Melara, there hasn’t been much of a response from him. The same can be said for Dr. Fietzer (clinician at Mount Sinai Hospital that Alex reached out to before).

White Paper – We started brainstorming for ideas on how condense our topic and see what exactly about Thrive NYC we should focus on. After bouncing ideas back and forth on Monday (4/11) we decided that we can assess how effective Thrive NYC is, compare it to established mental health programs, and then we can suggest what improvements Thrive NYC can make. On Wednesday (4/13), when it came time to structure the white paper, such as making a claim and supporting it, we were back to square one. We didn’t really have a solid claim because a simple assessment of a program holds no grounds in an argument. By the end of the day we decided that our argument could be “Thrive NYC is a promising program, but there are short falls as compared to other initiatives. Certain improvements can be made by _____.” This claim is structured so that we keep the same approach about Thrive NYC, but it also takes an argumentative stance. As for the blank provided, we are still researching and waiting on community contacts before we fill the blank in.

Research – In regards to research, we have looked into NICE and digital therapy. NICE is the National Institute for Health and Care for the UK and can be utilized as an established program that we can compare Thrive NYC to. Digital therapy was looked into as it can be an option on how to improve Thrive NYC.

What we plan to do:       
Community Contacts / Research – For the week (or weeks) to come, we await responses from our current contacts such as Dr. Melara and Dr. Fietzer. Along with that, we plan on reaching out to more people too. Kashaf has her friend who sought counseling. We plan on contacting her and asking on the availability of care, how has counseling helped, and if she has any thoughts on Thrive NYC. Sam also received a response from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and will either speak to or email with them with our questions (refer to Alex’s post. Activities in Progress). As a group we also have signed up for Adult Mental Health First Aid training on Monday, April 25^th. This event is sponsored by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. This eight hour course will allow us to see and experience what organizations such as the DOHMH is doing for mental health. This course will allow us to extend our reach with contacts as we can go and speak with the instructors or organizers.

White Paper – Our claim and any support to our claim is still not yet solidified. We are waiting on the input from community contacts before setting it in stone. In the meantime, we will do what we can and create a general outline for our claim and its arguments. We also plan on compiling the necessary history that is relevant to our claim. Note that we may have to tweak parts or chunks of our white paper based off the responses that we acquire from our community contacts.

Challenges Encountered:
Community Contacts – As stated earlier in “Progress Made,” getting responses from contacts such as Dr. Melara and Dr. Fietzer poses a challenge. Nevertheless, we do have resources (such as NAMI, the Adult Mental Health First Aid training, Aashana) to utilize as community contacts. We will continue to branch out to other groups from the list that Aashana provided while hoping to hear from Dr. Melara and Dr. Fietzer.

White Paper / Research – Before our group decided on our current claim for our white paper, we were brainstorming on what other approaches we could take on Thrive NYC. One of the suggestions was “We should invest more into Thrive NYC because ____.” This raised questions on the budget of Thrive NYC, like where is the money coming from and how is it being distributed. After doing a quick search online and a skim of the white paper for Thrive NYC, we realized that there is no definite answer to how money is being distributed. This fact practically nullified any claim our group could make whenever financials are involved. In the end, we decided that our current claim was the better way to go.

Tasks Remaining:
Now that we have a general claim. Our remaining tasks can be summarized as:
Compile research that relates to our claim –> Solidify our claim –> Create general outline of white paper –> Write the white paper
Of course, reaching out to more community contacts and getting responses from our current community contacts is also on our agenda.

Group Dynamics:
All in all our group is working well together. We have met up to brainstorm ideas about which direction this project to go. Any updates from our community contacts, questions, and concerns are all thrown into the group chat on Facebook. As for any documents, such as the white paper, we have started it in Google Docs where all the members can freely edit and view the documents. As for the distribution of labor, everyone has and will continue to do their part.

Summarizing:
We have gotten responses from previous contacts, but our project seems to still be lacking a strong community contact. Despite that fact, we have done the necessary research to keep the project moving. Since we have established our claim for our white paper, we can now move onto looking for research, reasons, and evidence to support it. From there we can start compiling and writing our white paper.