Promoting mental health and preventing mental-ill health among the increasing groups of socially marginalized people is a major challenge to European societies. There are various policies and services to achieve this in member states, but information on what constitutes best practice is fragmented and consistent guidelines do not exist. PROMO will bring together a multidisciplinary consortium of experts from 14 diverse member states (covering more than 85% of the total EU population) to consolidate the knowledge in the field and identify best practice. It will consider six different factors of social marginalization, review legislation and policies, and – focussing on major cities – assess systems of health and social services for the people concerned. PROMO will define guidelines for best practice and disseminate the findings widely among the relevant stakeholder groups in Europe. Finally, it will highlight barriers for the implementation of the guidelines and suggest solutions.

Objectives

General objectives

The general objectives of the proposed research are:

• To improve mental health and prevent mental-ill health of citizens in Member States, especially among individuals experiencing social marginalization due to one or more of the six following factors: (1) unemployment, (2) homelessness, (3) substance misuse, (4) street prostitution, (5) having a refugee or asylum/seeking status, and (6) being a member of an ethnic minority group 
• To contribute to policy research into inter-sectoral practices to promote mental health and prevent mental-ill health among individuals who are socially marginalized
• To contribute to development of evidence-based policies promoting mental health and preventing mental-ill health of the socially marginalized
• To develop implementation guidelines and best practice recommendations on promoting mental health and preventing mental illness among the socially marginalized across Member States.

Strategic objectives 

• To support and inform EU policies and activities on health determinants, particularly social marginalization factors and mental health
• To contribute to the formation of a more coherent overall policy vision with a clear evidence base on promoting mental health and preventing mental-ill health among the socially marginalized
• To support the development of actions for providing and exchanging good practice across EU Member States in terms of mental health policies, legislation, and services promoting mental and preventing mental illness in socially marginalized groups
• To promote cross-cutting and integrated approaches to promoting mental health and preventing mental-ill health across several social marginalization factors
• To promote and stimulate countries’ efforts to improve mental health and prevent mental-ill health of socially marginalized people.

Specific objectives

PROMO has the following specific objectives:

• To review policies and legislations related to promoting mental health and preventing mental-ill health among socially marginalized individuals
• To develop tools to assess programmes and systems of services in the participating states that aim at promoting mental health in the socially marginalized through describing services in terms of their organizational characteristics, type of clients, components of care, and funding arrangements, and how these services interconnect to form systems; the assessment will refer to the distinction between the three levels of health care suggested by the WHO
• To define the best inter-sectoral practice to promote mental health and prevent mental-ill health among the socially marginalized, identify barriers to implementing it, and suggest ways to overcome the barriers
• To disseminate the findings, including guidelines on best practice, widely among all relevant stakeholder groups
• To formulate policy recommendations based on the best inter-sectoral practices identified.