Strategic Plan
IDHA was founded in 2016 as a grassroots, community-based mental health training organization in New York City. Our 2021-2023 Strategic Plan constitutes IDHA’s first formal strategy, after operating on a project-by-project basis since our founding. This plan is the product of a nearly year-long process developed and led by IDHA co-founder Jazmine Russell, supported and informed by a group of 15 IDHA staff, board members, and organizers who formed the “Strategic Visioning Committee,” and with the support of external consultants.
The core purpose of the strategic plan is to communicate IDHA’s dynamic vision, as well as a set of priorities to guide us for the next three years. We see the strategic plan as a “roadmap” to navigate all other aspects of our programs and operations. The plan touches, informs, and will be constantly referred back to develop and refine our structure and decision-making, transformation into an anti-racist organization, fundraising and resource mobilization efforts, conflict resolution, membership, and more.
Annual Reports
2023
2023 shed light on the inextricable link between personal and societal transformation. Amid mass disruption and crisis, the need to transcend individualized and medicalized conceptions of mental health has never been clearer. This work is inherently political, and we all have a responsibility to challenge and resist interconnected systems of oppression. In 2023, IDHA reached thousands of people with liberatory mental health skills, strategies, and practices rooted in lived experience and multiple perspectives. Thanks to our work, a growing network of providers, survivors, peers, and activists are sharing transformative mental health knowledge, and putting it into practice in their own communities.
2022
We live in times laden with crisis. Simultaneously, these times present us with significant opportunities to transform what crisis is, and what care can look like. As more people grow aware of the injustices perpetuated by our current mental health system, we are seeing increased conversation about community, interdependence, and self-determination. IDHA helped nurture these conversations in 2022, reaching thousands of people with cutting-edge knowledge and new perspectives. Thanks to our work, there is a vibrant and ever-growing network of professionals, peers, family members, and activists spreading transformative mental health around the country and world.
2021
As more people awaken to the deeply-rooted injustices of our world, IDHA continues to strengthen a growing network of professionals, peers, family members, and activists with the skills and knowledge to shift dominant approaches to care towards models grounded in polyphony, humanity, care, and support. As a result of our work in 2021, thousands of people are equipped with cutting-edge knowledge and new perspectives, enabling them to create and strengthen communities of transformative mental health wherever they are, more urgent than ever during this time of prolonged trauma and grief.
2020
2020 was the year no one saw coming. As we experienced a series of unprecedented challenges with robust impacts on mental health and community care, the links between personal and societal crisis and transformation were continuously illuminated. As more people directed their attention to mental health, IDHA helped ensure that these conversations centered the influence of systemic oppression on our well being, the voices of lived experiences, and the multiple dimensions of health.