As professor by special appointment, Mark Jordans will establish a research programme linked to the work of War Child, which will focus on a care system that can be implemented in LMIC and humanitarian settings, is evidence-based, scalable and equitable. The research programme will investigate the development and evaluation of a care system that integrates targeted psychosocial support and mental health care. It will study various approaches towards child protection services aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect and will examine how the school and family environment can contribute to the wellbeing of children by promoting non-violent ways of upbringing and teaching. Moreover, it will involve intervention-level work that transfers current practice to meaningful evidence-based practice by establishing efficacy and effectiveness on the one hand and social relevance on the other. Implementation science studies will focus on how to transfer evidence-based interventions to achieve large-scale impact.

Jordans’ research focuses on the development, implementation and evaluation of psychosocial and mental health care systems in low and middle-income countries, especially for children with adversities and in fragile states. A further research focus is on the interplay between research and intervention development aimed at addressing the impact of organised violence, social injustice and poverty on the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of children and adolescents. He has directed intervention and research programmes for children affected by political violence, torture survivors and former child soldiers in Nepal, Burundi, South Sudan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sri Lanka. In recent years his research has evaluated the integration of mental health into primary health care settings in Nepal, which has led to significant policy changes adopted by the government.

About Mark Jordans

Jordans is currently director of Research and Development at War Child Holland. In addition, he is Reader in Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Humanitarian Settings at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences, King’s College London. He has been an honorary associate professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Center for Global Mental Health since 2012. Jordans is the founder and senior technical advisor of TPO Nepal, a leading mental health NGO in Nepal, where he worked between 1999 and 2011.

To date, Jordans has been the recipient of various grants, including an EU/Horizons 2020 grant and an EU/FP7 grant. He also sits on the editorial boards of various publications and has published extensively in leading peer-reviewed journals such as the WHO Bulletin, PLoS Medicine and the British Journal of Psychiatry. He is currently a commissioner for the Lancet Commission Report on Global Mental Health.