HSPR Talks Webinar
"Changing the system by changing how we work: Lessons from NExT Youth Mental Health"
Presented by
Dr. Nicole D'souza & Christine Mulligan
Tuesday, November 24, 2026
12:00pm - 1:00pm ET
This session tells the story of NExT, a peer-driven network in youth mental health research and shows how deliberately shifting how we work together - toward shared leadership, peer mentorship, and collaboration over competition - has become the mechanism for creating real change. Through concrete examples, we'll explore how these relational strategies are broadly transferable to health systems seeking to build capacity and drive change from within.
About the Speakers
Nicole D’souza (she/her) is an applied health systems researcher who is passionate about creating more responsive and equitable systems of support for young people. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa, where her research focuses on youth mental health and upstream approaches that foster social connection and wellbeing. Meaningful youth engagement is central to how she approaches this work. Nicole co-founded the NExT Youth Mental Health Network with Christine Mulligan in 2024 to cultivate a supportive community where emerging researchers can learn from one another and grow together. Across her work, Nicole is interested in how lived experience and community knowledge can reshape the ways health systems understand and respond to what young people need to thrive. Nicole is grateful to live and work on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
Christine (she/her) spends her days thinking about how to support the brilliant people around her to make lasting impacts in the health system, work she believes starts with relationships. She's an early career researcher dedicated to capacity- and community-building for emerging leaders in the health system, and co-founded the NExT Youth Mental Health network with friend and colleague Nicole D'souza in early 2024 to put that belief into practice. Outside of leading NExT, Christine serves as Director of the Health System Impact Training Platform and is a Founder/Consultant at Third Loop Health — roles all centered around creating the conditions to enable sustainable change within the health system. Christine is a grateful guest on the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations where she works, lives and plays and recognizes her privilege to collaborate with people and on projects across Turtle Island.
