Akwatu Khenti is a scientist in CAMH's Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and an Assistant Professor with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He has a specialist degree in economics and a master's degree in political science from the University of Toronto, and he is completing a PhD in health policy and equity at York University. He is involved in a wide variety of international initiatives on mental illness including addictions in primary care. He previously led CAMH’s development of a specialized drug treatment and prevention program for Black youth in Toronto, called the Substance Abuse Program for African and Caribbean Youth (SAPACCY).
He is a recipient of the Harry Jerome Award for Professional Excellence, the Ethno-Racial Education Initiatives Award from the Department of Public Health Science at the University of Toronto, the Educational Excellence for Community Health Care award for excellence in teaching from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, the William P. Hubbard Award from the City of Toronto for “pioneering work in community development, human rights and promotion of the African-Canadian heritage,” and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for innovative use of culture in substance abuse programming.
Areas of Research
Akwatu Khenti is a principal investigator on a Grand Challenge in Global Health project to improve mental health conditions in Gujarat, India, using human rights-based approaches, and of a CIHR-funded randomized clinical trial to test an anti-stigma intervention in primary health care in Ontario. He has also co-led drug research capacity-building with the Inter-American Drug Control Commission (CICAD, OAS) involving 30 universities across Latin America and the Caribbean. He is a collaborator in a Peruvian cluster randomized clinical trial on a stigma intervention in primary care, as well as on a pilot study of a telephone application for psychosis linking traditional healers with the psychiatric system in Tanzania. He was a principal investigator for the development of easy-to-follow, culturally adapted cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) interventions for working with individuals of Latin American origin and individuals of African Caribbean origin (both English-speaking and French-speaking). He is now principal investigator on a project to test this CBT intervention with spiritual leaders in Haiti to see whether it can strengthen the system of informal care.
Publications
View Akwatu Khenti's publications on PubMed.