SPRING – the Schizophrenia Policy and Research Institute NextGen – is a multi-year initiative that brings together a diverse group of stakeholders to create a roadmap for transforming the siloed system of care for people with schizophrenia into a path toward recovery.

SPRING is a collaboration of people with lived experience, treatment providers, researchers, community leaders and policymakers – all of whom share a mission to ensure people living with schizophrenia have access to proper treatment and are given the chance to recover and thrive.

The inaugural SPRING Summit brings together these varied stakeholders to discuss the most glaring gaps in care for this serious brain disease, identify the reasons for those gaps and begin the process of creating a new treatment journey that supports recovery. Together, we will identify community-driven solutions to create a new treatment journey that supports recovery.

Recovery generally requires urgent, best-practice treatment and a range of integrated support services – the type of care our siloed healthcare system does not often provide. But if everyone with schizophrenia had access to such care, the picture of this disease would look vastly different.

The inaugural SPRING Summit will focus on the treatment journey, with event outcomes to include public recommendations for those with lived experience and treatment providers; an event proceedings paper for submission to a scientific journal; and a draft framework for Center of Excellence evaluation standards.