Creating futures out of the conference: 20 years of strengthening mental health capacity in the Pacific.

Creating Futures (CF) is an independent, collaborative taskforce supported by in-kind commitments from organisations and practitioners. This paper summarises CF 2023 themes and provides an overview of 20 years of CF activities. It highlights challenges and opportunities to integrate global mental health partnerships and regional mental health projects.

Making it real: Actioning the mental health strategy with Pacific Island communities.

Objective: This paper explores the practical implications of the World Health Organization strategy of focussing on community-based mental health and wellbeing ecosystems in the context of the Pacific Island Countries. It draws on the expertise of the participants of a collaborative workshop held during the Creating Futures conference in 2023 to discuss successes, challenges, barriers, opportunities in the implementation of the framework and to examine potential future actions.

Conclusions: Some of the significant factors that make for effective and sustained community-based mental health systems include appropriate central coordination and oversight of community-based services, adequate frameworks for quality assurance, meaningful data collection and sustained long-term funding, as well as a range of workforce factors.

Effectiveness of NCD-Related Fiscal Policies: Evidence from the Pacific.

Obesity in Pacific Island countries (PICs) has hit crisis levels, and the consequent high non-communicable disease (NCD) burden is devastating for their developing economies. Nutrition transitions from traditional, plant and seafood diets to a dependence on processed foods are at the core of the obesity and NCD epidemic in PICs. Fiscal policies are widely promoted as an effective mechanism to reduce consumption of unhealthy foods and increase consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Prevalence of the tobacco product dokha among high school students in Dubai.

Background: Dokha is a mixed tobacco product, smoked through a pipe, traditional in Arabic culture and popular in the UAE. User forums suggest this product may contain higher levels of nicotine and potentially psychoactive properties. However, there have been few published studies on dokha prevalence and health effects.