QENDRES SE SHENDETIT DHE MIREQENIES KOMUNITARE

Their core work

The Community Centre for Health and Wellbeing is an Albanian NGO based in Tirana that delivers community-level mental health services and health promotion programmes. Their H2020 work positions them as a ground-level implementation partner: they bring practical experience deploying evidence-based mental health interventions in real-world community and workplace settings in Albania and the Western Balkans. In the MENTUPP project they contributed specifically to workplace mental health promotion targeting depression, anxiety, and suicide prevention in high-risk occupational sectors such as construction and SMEs. They represent an underrepresented Southeast European perspective in pan-European mental health research consortia.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

The organisation entered H2020 through a broad eHealth implementation project (ImpleMentAll, 2017) where the focus was on digital health tool rollout rather than a specific condition or setting — no specific clinical keywords were recorded for that project. By 2020, with MENTUPP, their work had sharpened considerably: the keywords shift to named mental health conditions (depression, anxiety, suicide) and specific target populations (construction workers, SME employees). This signals a move from general digital health adoption toward specialist occupational mental health intervention — a more defined and commercially viable niche.

They are consolidating around workplace mental health — specifically reaching workers in high-risk, underserved sectors — which places them well for future consortia on occupational health, suicide prevention at work, and mental health policy implementation in the Western Balkans.

How they like to work

This organisation operates exclusively as a consortium partner, never as project coordinator — consistent across both projects. Despite a small project portfolio, they have engaged with 35 unique partners across 14 countries, suggesting they join large, multi-site RIA consortia rather than small bilateral collaborations. They likely function as a national implementation site, contributing local participant recruitment, community access, and contextual knowledge from Albania rather than leading research design.

With 35 consortium partners across 14 countries from just two projects, this organisation is embedded in broad European research networks despite its modest funding. Their partnerships span a significant portion of Europe, reflecting the large multinational consortia typical of RIA mental health projects.

What sets them apart

This organisation offers something genuinely rare in European mental health research: a credentialed community health NGO operating in Albania, one of the few non-EU Western Balkan countries consistently included in Horizon projects. For consortia needing geographic coverage beyond the EU27 or seeking to demonstrate reach into lower-income European contexts, they fill a gap that no Western European partner can replicate. Their specific experience with occupational mental health in construction and SME workforces adds practical credibility for intervention studies in those sectors.

Highlights from their portfolio

• MENTUPP
  Largest funding received (EUR 112,140) and the project that defines their current niche — multi-country workplace mental health intervention targeting construction workers and SME employees, covering depression, anxiety, and suicide prevention.
• ImpleMentAll
  Their entry into H2020 research, positioning them in the eHealth implementation science space and establishing their capacity to participate in large European RIA consortia.