Dr. Palmira Fortunato dos Santos started her career as clinical psychologist for children and adolescent at the Maputo Central Hospital in Mozambique. She joined the Ministry of Health Mental health team in 2006 coordinating the organization of MH services for children and adolescents at the National Health System. She coordinated the development and writing of the Mozambique’s Mental Health Strategy 2016-2026, which relies on task-shifting and focuses on primary care for mental health services provision. Dr. Santos coordinated the first national assessment of mental health services, which included an analysis of all health facilities with mental health services in all ten provinces of Mozambique including more than 50 districts. She led the implementation of a WHO-funded mhGAP Epilepsy Pilot Program in Mozambique from 2013-2018 to integrate epilepsy care and treatment into primary health care, which trained community health workers to screen for epilepsy and refer those in need to care. Her research seeks to define areas where growth in mental health services are needed. From 2014 to 2023 Dr. Santos lead of the MH Department Research Service focusing on the development and implementation of MH policies and strategies, organization of mental health services, team management and research coordination. During that period, she coordinated a study to integrate mental health in primary care in Mozambique, the PRIDE SSA Project (PRIDE SSA Partnership in Research to Implement and Disseminate Sustainable and Scalable Evidence Based Practices in Sub-Saharan Africa), leaded by Wainberg and Oquendo from Columbia University. This study included delivering Interpersonal Counselling for adults with common mental disorders. A team of psychologists was trained as trainer for Interpersonal Psychotherapy and replicated the training to other providers. In January 2021 Dr Santos started the implementation of the study Treating Common Mental Disorders in Women in Mozambique by Addressing Intimate Partner Violence in Couples as local PI. One of the study goals was to adapt IPT and create a IPT-Couple intervention to be delivered by mental health providers to reduce common mental disorders resulting from intimate partner violence.  In June 2021, she implemented another study as local PI, the Youth-PRIDEs: Implementing Integrated mHealth care for adolescent depression within primary care clinics in Mozambique that aimed to adapt and validate the Interpersonal Psychotherapy for adolescents. Dr Santos has expertise in interpersonal psychotherapy both as psychologist and researcher. She has been acting as trainer and supervisor. Trainings in Mozambique were conducted under the mentoring of Myrna Weissman, Laura Mufson and Kathleen Clougherty and Camila Matsuzaka. Dr. Santos is currently based at the National Institute of Health of Mozambique as a researcher and coordinator of the Mental Health, Trauma and Violence Program. Her research focuses on integrating mental health into communities and primary health care using task shifting/sharing strategies. Specifically, she is leading research in the areas of Intimate Partner Violence, Adolescent MH, Non Communicable Diseases risk factors and MH and MHPSS in emergencies.