CAMH launches KnowledgeX portal - a new frontier of CAMH's role as expert
resource for professionals

TORONTO, Feb. 25 /CNW/ - The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has long been known as a trusted source of information on mental health and addictions issues. Sharing information and resources has always been part of CAMH's mandate to collaborate and make current research and best practice available to all health professionals.

With the KnowledgeX (http://knowledgex.camh.net/Pages/default.aspx) professional portal, CAMH provides the first electronic resource aimed directly at professionals working in the mental health and addictions field.

This new resource will bridge the gap between research-based knowledge and practice among researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to improve client outcomes.

As a leader in research and best practices CAMH has a unique role to play in the translation and dissemination of knowledge to the mental health and addictions community.

"This is designed as a dynamic information resource for professionals, whether they're specialists or primary care service providers, whether they work in health promotion or education," Krystyna Ross, manager, Publication Service and one of the project leads, says. "Most importantly, KnowledgeX is built to encourage the participation of professionals in sharing information, expertise and experience - in other words, communities of practice."

The portal will support community-based service providers and efforts to increase the capacity of the mental health and addiction system by providing a virtual space (e.g., blogs, discussion boards, wikis) where addiction and mental health professionals can share ideas and experience.

Professionals in the field will have access to practical information in a wide variety of formats (e.g., videos, podcasts, toolkits, research papers, conference presentations) from a wide variety of sources, not just those developed by CAMH. As a result, we'll increase system capacity by facilitating the development of virtual communities of practice/learning communities.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, as well as one of the world's leading research centres in this field. CAMH combines clinical care, research, education, policy development and health promotion to transform the lives of people affected by mental health and addiction issues. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre.

For further information: and to arrange interviews contact: Michael Torres at [phone] or email: [email protected]