Engineer Oluwaseyi Oluwajuwon Ola, the Executive Officer of BossmanSwift LLC, has been nationally recognised with the Trailblazer Award for Cultural Mental Health Innovation. The award is for his innovative work on a digital platform that is transforming African immigrants and refugee youths in America’s access to mental health and substance use disorder treatment.

His innovation, the Trusting Cultural Expansion for Coordinated Community Mental Health Intervention (TECCMEH), is unique in that it is culturally driven. As opposed to most other conventional digital tools that adopt generic solutions, TECCMEH had African youths lived experiences, languages, and cultural contexts at its centre.

What is revolutionary in TECCMEH is how it bridges culture and technology. With a background in computer science and a passion for community well-being, Engineer Oluwaseyi Ola designed the platform not so much as a technology service in itself, but as an innovation in how mental healthcare is delivered especially to marginalised communities. The platform provides the opportunity for users to access essential services in Somali, Amharic, Oromo, French, and English languages, promoting dignity, comprehension, and trust in all interactions.

Apart from the innovation itself, Engineer Oluwaseyi Ola’s mission also demonstrates increasing awareness of the necessity for culturally responsive care within the field of mental health. His work has an immediate response to issues of stigma, fear of legal consequences, and miscommunication that frequently beset immigrant and refugee communities when they try to access help. In a period of slightly more than a year, TECCMEH has provided service to more than 1,200 youths and families and has invested in solutions that are technology-enabled, community-based, and culturally responsive.

This award-winning project is also a reflection of his wider advocacy: promoting the collaboration of technology innovators and mental health professionals in order to close the care gaps among vulnerable groups. In taking technology towards great inclusivity and cultural relevance, Engineer Oluwaseyi Ola is pushing the agenda for a new paradigm that digital innovations may adopt in responding to deep-seated public health issues.

As mental health has taken the world stage, particularly within displaced communities, innovators such as Engineer Oluwaseyi Ola are showing that innovation should be in tandem with empathy and cultural intelligence. Such a platform is TECCMEH, which paves the way toward equity and healing.

This acknowledgement cements Engineer Oluwaseyi Ola as a foremost authority in culturally grounded mental health innovation, laying down the gauntlet for others to reimagine the intersection of technology, community, and care.

Check here to learn more about the TECCMEH app