A new international body for equitable public mental health — built on prevention, community, and the next generation
Mental health is one of the defining challenges of our time. It touches every country, every community, and every generation. And yet, despite decades of growing awareness, a significant proportion of the global population still cannot access the mental healthcare they need not only in low- and middle-income countries, but in some of the wealthiest nations on earth. The gap between what we know works and what is actually available to people remains vast, stubborn, and deeply unfair.
Today, the World Health Innovation Summit (WHIS) and the Global Social Prescribing Alliance (GSPA) are proud to announce the launch of the WHIS–GSPA Global Mental Health Commission — a new international body convened to address that gap directly, and to build the global infrastructure for equitable, prevention-focused, community-centred mental health for everyone.
Why this Commission, and why now?
The answer begins with an honest reckoning with where we are.
Socioeconomic vulnerability consistently deepens mental health inequality. Communities facing poverty, displacement, discrimination, and social isolation carry a disproportionate burden of mental ill-health and are the least likely to receive adequate support. Investment in prevention and early intervention remains chronically insufficient. The result is avoidable suffering on a global scale, with consequences that ripple outward into families, workplaces, economies, and the broader fabric of society.
But the problem is not only one of resources. It is also one of approach. For too long, mental health policy has been built primarily around clinical treatment, the hospital bed, the prescription, the appointment that can take months to arrive. Clinical care matters enormously, and we must never undermine it. But treatment alone is not enough, and it was never going to be enough.
Mental health is shaped by where people live, how they are connected to their communities, whether they feel they belong, what meaningful activity is available to them, and whether the social fabric around them is strong or frayed. These are the social determinants of health and they are among the most powerful predictors of mental wellbeing we have. Ignoring them in favour of purely clinical responses is not just inadequate. It is inequitable.
The WHIS–GSPA Global Mental Health Commission exists because the world needs a body that takes all of this seriously that brings together the evidence, the training, the policy expertise, and the community action needed to shift mental health practice from reactive treatment to proactive, community-rooted prevention and promotion.
What the Commission will do
The Commission’s mission is clear: to function as a global workforce and standardisation platform for equitable public mental health generating evidence, shaping policy, developing training, and empowering communities across high-, middle-, and low-income settings alike.
That means working across several interconnected areas. The Commission will map the global gaps in public mental health policy and their impact on people’s right to health. It will work to understand and strengthen how medical students and future health professionals are trained in public mental health because the workforce of tomorrow needs to be equipped with the skills, values, and community orientation that the challenges ahead demand. It will integrate social prescribing into mental health prevention and promotion frameworks, recognising that the link between community connection and mental wellbeing is not a soft add-on but a core component of effective practice.
It will develop and deliver flexible, accessible training programmes in Values-Based Practice in Mental Health, Social Prescribing applied to Mental Health, and Psychological First Aid — designed to be used in diverse settings across the world, not just in well-resourced academic centres. It will pioneer community-focused initiatives, including a pilot addiction prevention programme in secondary schools in Spain, developed in collaboration with one of the country’s leading addiction units. And it will produce evidence-based position papers, policy guidance, and practical tools that can inform national strategies and international commitments.
This is not a talking shop. It is a platform for action.
The social prescribing connection
The Commission’s deep connection to the Global Social Prescribing Alliance is not incidental — it is foundational.
Social prescribing begins from the recognition that health is not made in hospitals. It is made in communities. It is made in the relationships people have, the activities that give their lives meaning, the support networks that hold them when things are hard. When a link worker connects someone to a community garden, a peer support group, a creative class, or a faith community, they are doing something that no prescription pad can replicate — they are addressing the social roots of suffering.
For mental health, this insight is not peripheral. It is central. Community engagement, social support, and wider social interventions are not nice-to-haves alongside clinical treatment. They are essential components of mental health prevention and promotion in their own right. Ignoring them does not just leave people underserved — it perpetuates the inequalities that make mental ill-health more likely in the first place.
The Commission will work to embed this understanding into mental health policy and practice globally, drawing on the GSPA’s network of practitioners, policymakers, and community organisations across dozens of countries.
The Commission is being established in partnership with some of the world’s leading academic institutions. Founding partners included world leading academic institutions that will bring the research excellence, clinical expertise, and global reach that a commission of this ambition demands. Partnerships are being confirmed, and we look forward to sharing the full list in the coming weeks.
The people leading this work
A commission is only as strong as the people who lead it and we are proud to be working with an exceptional group of individuals who bring complementary expertise, genuine passion, and deep experience to this work.
Gareth Presch, CEO and Founder of WHIS and CEO of the Global Social Prescribing Alliance, has spent more than a decade building the global infrastructure for health innovation and community wellbeing. His conviction that healthcare’s future lies upstream in prevention, in community, in social connection is the founding impulse of this Commission.
“Mental health cannot be solved in a clinic. It is made and sustained in communities, in relationships, in the conditions that allow people to live with dignity and belonging. This Commission exists to make that understanding count in policy, in practice, and in the lives of people who have been left behind for too long.”
Bernardo Flôr-Rodrigues, Deputy Commission Lead and WHIS–GSPA Global Youth Representative for Public Mental Health, brings the perspective of the next generation of health professionals one that is determined to practise medicine in a way that addresses the full human context of mental ill-health, not just its clinical symptoms. Bernardo’s work spans Values-Based Practice, social prescribing, and public mental health research across Europe and beyond.
“We are a generation of health professionals who were trained to treat illness. This Commission is about training the next generation to prevent it and to do that, we need to understand the communities, the social determinants, and the human stories that shape mental health long before anyone arrives at a clinic.”
Sheva Carr, Co-Director at HeartMath Healthcare, brings internationally recognised expertise in heart-based resilience, emotional regulation, and the science of wellbeing. Her work bridges the personal and the systemic connecting individual practices for mental resilience to the broader community and organisational conditions that sustain it.
Dr Robert Browning of HeartMath Healthcare contributes deep expertise in resilience science and its applications in healthcare settings, bringing both clinical grounding and a commitment to scalable, community-accessible approaches to mental wellbeing.
Dr John Naslund, faculty in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is one of the world’s leading researchers on digital mental health, global mental health systems, and community-based approaches to mental health promotion. His research has shaped policy and practice across multiple continents.
“The evidence is clear that community-based approaches to mental health work and that they work especially well for the populations most likely to be failed by traditional clinical systems. The challenge now is scale, standardisation, and equity. That is exactly what this Commission is designed to address.”
Patricia Saleeby Ph.D of Bradley University brings expertise in social work, human rights, and the intersection of disability, mental health, and social justice ensuring that the Commission’s work is grounded in the lived experience of those it seeks to serve, and that equity is not just a value statement but an operational commitment.
What comes next
The Commission is open. The work begins now.
In the months ahead, the Commission will publish its inaugural position paper on global gaps in public mental health policy, launch its first training modules, and convene its founding network of practitioners, academics, policymakers, and young people from across the world. It will present its work at international forums including the United Nations General Assembly and will work to ensure that its findings reach the policymakers and health system leaders who have the power to act on them.
If you are a practitioner, a researcher, a policymaker, a community organisation, or a young person who cares about mental health — and who believes that prevention, equity, and community are the foundations on which better mental health for everyone must be built — this Commission is for you.
We are just beginning. And we are glad you are here.
*The WHIS–GSPA Global Mental Health Commission is a joint initiative of the World Health Innovation Summit CIC and the Global Social Prescribing Alliance. For partnership, membership, media, and collaboration enquiries, please contact the Commission Secretariat at *info@whis.world