Scaling quality mental health care for the World Health Organization
Scaling quality mental health care for the World Health Organization
From paper tool to global standard in mental health training, EQUIP is changing how carers learn, practice and support others.
Setting the scene
EQUIP, short for Ensuring Quality in Psychosocial and Mental Health Care, began life as a paper-based tool designed to assess how safe and effective carers were in providing mental health support. Created by George Washington University and War Child in collaboration with WHO, it showed promising results in small pilots, helping carers build confidence and provide safer care. WHO was keen to test EQUIP at scale, to then share more widely with NGOs, universities and hospitals across the world.
The challenge
A Human Centered Design discovery process began within a controlled trial with eight NGOs working in very different parts of the world. The tool had to deliver consistent, reliable results across languages, cultures and training environments, including remote training settings with poor internet access. For it to succeed, the platform had to be easy to adopt, intuitive to use, and flexible enough to support a range of training needs and interventions.

The solution
We started with people, not technology, studying how the paper version was used in practice, we listened to carers and trainers about what worked and what slowed them down. From there we created digital prototypes and took them directly into the field. In Uganda, Ethiopia, Nepal and Peru, NGO staff used interactive prototypes of EQUIP for real assessments of carers. We reviewed what worked and what did not, and made changes on the spot. This constant cycle of feedback and quick iteration meant the platform quickly became something NGOs felt was designed with them, not just for them.
Above: Socios en Salud, in Peru, demonstrating their use of the EQUIP tool.
Adoption spread quickly. NGO staff who once struggled with lengthy paper assessments found the digital platform straightforward and effective. They began asking for more features, more translations and new ways to use it. For training mental health carers, EQUIP improved both safety and effectiveness. For monitoring officers, it was transformative: instead of wading through stacks of data by hand, they now had automated reports and clear visualisations, cutting their workload in half.

In 2022 EQUIP was launched publicly. What began as a paper form in small pilots had become a global platform, used not only in low-resource NGO training programmes but also in hospitals, universities and supervisory settings.
EQUIP enables trainers to really zero on what our trainees need. We understand what areas we need to focus on during training and tailor our sessions accordingly.

The outcomes
Today, EQUIP is available in 15 languages and used in more than 30 countries, with over a thousand people engaging with it every week. Its impact has been so clear that WHO and USAID have made it the mandatory platform for assessing foundational mental health helping skills. Its influence has been recognised far beyond the humanitarian sector, with The Lancet, Scientific American and Cambridge University Press all publishing on the dramatic improvements it has brought to mental health training.
We have been impressed how SystemSeed translated the concept into the reality of the digital EQUIP platform, which War Child is already using and benefiting from.