e-NAVIGATE: Adapting evidence-based early psychosis intervention services for virtual delivery

Psychosis is an often frightening and disabling condition that typically manifests in adolescence and young adulthood. Early psychosis intervention (EPI) services are the standard of care for youth with psychosis, helping them to achieve recovery and avoid catastrophic outcomes. A manualized package of evidence-based treatments called NAVIGATE has been increasingly adopted by EPI programs to achieve superior outcomes and standardize care. To curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, EPI services have had to rapidly transition to delivering care virtually. However, there is little evidence to support virtual delivery of EPI services. We propose to evaluate the implementation effectiveness of e-NAVIGATE, an innovative virtual adaptation of NAVIGATE. We will examine how closely it adheres to the EPI model, and what helps and harms implementation, including health equity factors, to help improve future development and implementation of the model. We will evaluate the acceptability of e-NAVIGATE to patients, family members and clinicians. A network of EPI programs across Ontario that have recently implemented NAVIGATE will serve as sites for the spread of e-NAVIGATE. This work may help increasing numbers of youth with psychosis receive high-quality care during as well as beyond the pandemic.