What We Are Working On

Mental Health-Related Disability Community Mapping

In Development

MAPS Lab is developing a participatory community-mapping initiative to understand how places, services, systems, environments, and everyday conditions shape accessibility for people with mental health-related disabilities. The project is being designed to bring together disability justice, community research, participatory mapping, environmental or community scans, and potentially ethnographic methods. Because the project is at an early stage, its research questions, methods, and community-facing outputs will be shaped through development work and partnership.

Current or anticipated outputs: Conceptual framework; research protocol and ethics materials; participatory mapping tools; community-facing maps or resources; future scholarly outputs.

Youth and Young Adult Co-Researcher Community

In Development

MAPS Lab is building an ongoing way for youth and young adults to participate in the work of the Lab as co-researchers, collaborators, and knowledge holders across projects. This model is distinct from recruiting people to participate in a single study. Development work includes role design, onboarding, research training, outreach, relationship building, power-sharing, compensation, recognition, authorship and credit, decision-making, and evaluation of the co-researcher experience.

Current or anticipated outputs: Co-researcher role descriptions; onboarding and training resources; participation and governance processes; evaluation of the model.

Mental Health Accessibility, Unmet Need and Equity

Active Research Stream

This research stream examines who experiences unmet need, how mental health-related disability interacts with healthcare access, and how inequities emerge across groups of youth and young adults. It builds on the HEARTS research program and extends the Lab's work into population-level and intersectional quantitative analysis, including the development of more equity-centred ways to conceptualize and measure access.

Current or anticipated outputs: Peer-reviewed manuscripts; conceptual models; equity-centred indicators; policy-relevant analyses; plain-language and public scholarship outputs.

HEARTS: Helping Enable Access and Remove Barriers to Support

Foundational / Ongoing Scholarship

HEARTS is the foundational program of research from which much of MAPS Lab's work on mental health accessibility emerged. The research examined healthcare access and unmet need among young adults with mental health-related disabilities using critical realism, population-level analysis, qualitative inquiry, and participatory research. HEARTS contributed to the Lab's conceptual work on access as relational and temporal, the access paradox, recognition and misrecognition, research ethics, and participatory power.

Current or anticipated outputs: Peer-reviewed and in-development manuscripts; conceptual and methodological contributions; tools and public scholarship.

Structural Vulnerability Model

In Development

MAPS Lab is developing a structural vulnerability model that examines how relationships, institutions, systems, resources, and social conditions shape the options available to people. The model is intended to support clearer analysis of how vulnerability is produced, how structural conditions interact, and where policy, organizational, or community interventions may expand possibilities.

Current or anticipated outputs: Conceptual model; scholarly manuscript; visual and public-facing tools; future indicators or applications.

PARTNER Tool and Participatory Power

Ongoing Development

The PARTNER Tool emerged from participatory mental health research as a structured way to make power in research relationships visible and discussable. MAPS Lab's broader participatory-power work examines decision-making, authorship, recognition, compensation, participation, accountability, and the conditions required for more reciprocal research relationships.

Current or anticipated outputs: PARTNER Tool refinement and application; methods scholarship; training and facilitation resources; public-facing guidance.

Building and Operationalizing an Anti-Oppressive Research Lab

In Development

MAPS Lab is developing an evidence-informed approach to anti-oppressive research-lab practice. The work asks what anti-oppressive practice means for the structures, relationships, decisions, research processes, and everyday operations of a lab. Development areas include power, authorship, compensation, decision-making, access, inclusion, accountability, standard operating procedures, evaluation, and practical tools that can be useful beyond MAPS.

Current or anticipated outputs: Evidence synthesis; lab principles and practice standards; standard operating procedures; checklists, guides or decision aids; evaluation approach; public-facing resources.

Town Halls, Public Scholarship and Accessible Research

In Development

MAPS Lab is creating public-facing ways for communities to know what research is happening, understand what is being learned, ask questions, contribute ideas, and influence what happens next. Potential formats include town halls, blogs, research explainers, digital resources, presentations, community events, tabling, and other forms of accessible public scholarship.

Current or anticipated outputs: Town hall model; public events; explainers; web resources; accessible presentations; blogs and other public scholarship; evaluation of reach and use.

MAPS Research Community Registry

In Development – Ethics Required Before Participant Registry Launch

MAPS Lab is developing research infrastructure for people who want to hear about or potentially participate in future MAPS studies. The participant-facing registry will require research ethics approval and careful processes for consent, privacy, accessibility, communication, data stewardship, withdrawal, and long-term maintenance. A separate partner and collaborator directory can support organizations and individuals interested in working with the Lab.

Current or anticipated outputs: Ethics application; consent and communication materials; standard operating procedures; data-management processes; public participation information.