Dr Jill Murphy

Dr. Jill Murphy is the Executive Director of the APEC Digital Hub for Mental Health. She is also the Research Chair in Mental Health and Addictions and an Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Health Program at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Dr. Murphy’s research seeks to improve equitable access to mental health care in low resource settings, including low-and-middle income countries and rural communities in Canada. Her research expertise and interests include using digital technologies to promote equitable access to mental health promotion and care, including via co-design; task-sharing and the integration of mental health care into community-based settings with an emphasis on depression care; and implementation science. She is committed to engaging in collaborative research including through the meaningful engagement of people with lived and living experiences and in collaboration with policy makers. She lives in the small town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia in Eastern Canada.

Plenary Title: The APEC Digital Hub for Mental Health: Leveraging Digital Technologies to Promote Equitable Access to Mental Health Promotion and Care in the APEC Region
Date: 16 July 2025, Wednesday
Time: 9.25 AM

Plenary Abstract
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Digital Hub for Mental Health (‘the Digital Hub’) is hosted in Canada with the collaboration of people with lived and living experiences, researchers, clinicians, and policy makers from across the APEC region. The 2021-2030 Roadmap to Promote Mental Wellness in a Healthy Asia Pacific (‘the Roadmap’) represents an ongoing commitment by APEC member economies to continue strengthening mental health systems and promoting well-being in support of sustainable economic growth. The Roadmap acknowledges the potential of digital technologies to support access to mental health promotion, prevention, screening and treatment across several priority focus areas.
Digital technologies are increasingly recognised as effective and acceptable methods of delivering mental health prevention, promotion and care interventions. Despite this, ongoing efforts are required to understand how these can be delivered equitably among diverse populations, and how to promote uptake, engagement and sustained implementation by patients, clinicians and health systems. The Digital Hub has undertaken several collaborative research studies to leverage digital mental health technologies as a means of promoting equitable access to mental health promotion and care in the APEC region. This talk will provide an overview of this work, touching on several regional priority areas. This includes results from the Technology and Equitable Access to Mental Health in the Asia Pacific (TEAM-CAP) study, which examined challenges and opportunities to promote equitable access to digital mental health technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. It will also describe the Youth Promotion of Resilience Involving Mental e-Health (Y-PRIME) study, which seeks to promote youth well-being and resilience via a co-designed app for secondary school students in Vietnam. Reflections and recommendations about promoting mental health equity and the sustained uptake of digital mental health technologies within diverse contexts will be provided.