Depression is one of the leading causes of morbidity and disability worldwide. Despite the existence of effective treatments, only one in four Americans with depression receives appropriate treatment, and the rate is especially low among African Americans. Recent studies show that when African Americans and other minorities participate in quality improvement efforts in a health plan, clinical improvement is even greater than among whites, and both groups benefit in terms of personal economic growth (Wells et al., 2000; Schoenbaum et al., 2001). That means that improving depression care may help address both health and economic disparities.

The Witness for Wellness project is a community-led, multi-stakeholder, academic-community partnership aimed at developing community-based approaches to improve health outcomes for depression in minority communities. We hope to develop strategies for talking about and dealing with depression, increasing awareness and recognition of depression, improving options for care, and addressing issues that can lead to and/or result from depression. To do so, we will utilize a community-based model for stimulating change developed by Healthy African American Families (HAAF). At the center of HAAF’s collaborative model are community work groups that engage diverse stakeholders around a particular health issue.

The project includes the following activities: 1) an initial planning stage that includes a community forum and subsequent community discussions about depression; 2) convening community-lead work groups; 3) development of draft products/toolkits to be used by the community or stakeholders in addressing community goals, such as education, resource development, or policy issues; 4) formulation of an overall recommended approach and/or strategies for building community capacity to address depression; and 5) an evaluation, largely through observation of working groups and community meetings; community focus groups; and feedback from community participants through interviews or brief surveys.

Because we hope that this effort may lead to a useful strategy for other communities, this project will focus on developing products, such as intervention toolkits, informational manuals, a website, media broadcasts, or other useful materials, that can be used by other communities. Further, we will carefully document the development process and impact through our evaluation. We plan to disseminate our findings to the impacted community through conferences, symposiums and other knowledge transfer events. We also plan to present our findings through journal articles and conference presentations.