Opportunity-Based Probation (OBP) is a new juvenile probation model that expands on adolescent development research by leveraging adolescents’ drive towards independence as well as their heightened receptivity to rewards. In collaboration with their probation officers, youth create meaningful goals and incentives that reward the development of prosocial behavior. Probation officers scaffold prosocial behavior by reinforcing success and constructively addressing probation violations and problem behaviors. OBP was originally developed through a collaboration between UW CoLab and juvenile court leadership in Pierce County, Washington with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and is now being implemented, refined, and tested for acceptability, implementation, and preliminary effectiveness. In 2021, a second OBP site was started in Hartford County, Connecticut and is currently undergoing co-design and implementation efforts with an eye for eventual testing and expansion statewide.
Patient Population: Adolescents
Accelerating research use in courts
Measuring the use of research evidence within organizations and systems is a rapidly growing area of study in the social sciences as researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in a variety of systems try to bridge the research-to-practice gap. With growing calls for justice systems, especially juvenile justice systems, to integrate developmental and behavioral health science within all aspects of the justice process, it is critical to develop a standardized measure of how individuals use research evidence within these systems. This will allow researchers to examine how research is used across studies, sites, and points in time, as well as to refine and compare new interventions aimed at increasing the use of research. Toward this end, the UW CoLab research team with the help of the William T. Grant Foundation, is developing and validating a measure of research use with collaborators nationwide.
COVID-19 Student Survey
This project involved an anonymous needs assessment for 6th through 12th graders in Washington to collect data on what students thought was going well, what challenges they had encountered, and what their needs were as schools replied to largely in-person instruction following a largely virtually year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Understanding the support needs of gender expansive youth
Approximately 35% of youth who identified as transgender report having attempted suicide in the past 12 months. Despite this high risk, few preventive interventions have been developed specifically to address the unique needs of this group who experience high rates of marginalization, victimization and social isolation based on their gender identities. This study will use human centered design principles to adapt the Caring Contacts intervention for suicide prevention for transgender and gender expansive (TGE) youth and user test this intervention with suicidal ideation who are identified via a Zero Suicide-based screening program in the Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic.
Evaluation of a new approach to youth suicidal crises: Swift Outpatient Alternatives for Rapid Stabilization (SOARS)
The study will evaluate a novel program developed by our team to improve the effective outpatient management of youth with acute suicide risk. This program evaluation examines just-in time intervention to assess suicide risk level, address imminent risk, and begin treatment to address ideographic suicidal drivers over time. The clinic has served over 200 youth and families since 2019. Qualitative and quantitative data from youth, caregivers, and clinicians demonstrate high levels of fidelity, feasibility, appropriateness, and acceptability, however, impact on core health outcomes has not been conducted. This funding will allow for analysis of the treatment program to demonstrate the impact of the intervention on suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
Enhancing engagement with digital mental health care
Although several randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that digital mental health (DMH) tools are highly effective, most consumers do not sustain their use of these tools. The field currently lacks an understanding of DMH tool engagement, how engagement is associated with well-being, and what practices are effective at sustaining engagement. In this partnership between Mental Health America, Talkspace, and the University of Washington (UW), we propose a naturalistic and experimental, theory driven program of research, with the aim of understanding 1) how consumer engagement in self-help and clinician assisted DMH varies and what engagement patterns exist, 2) the association between patterns of engagement and important consumer outcomes, and 3) the effectiveness of personalized strategies for optimal engagement with DMH treatment.
Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools
This research developed and tested a pre-implementation intervention, based on Motivational Interviewing, as means of facilitating greater adoption of useful school-based practices among preventionists working in high schools.
A Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Trial of a School-based Teen Marijuana Check-Up
This research supports the conduct of a Type II hybrid trial, which compares via two-arm RCT features: 1) gold-standard vs. as-needed clinician coaching for school-based interventions over a two-year period, and 2) the clinical effectiveness of TMCU vs. services-as-usual among marijuana-using students.
Latinx Health in Rural Areas (Project LAHRA)
This project aims to examine health disparities in substance use and factors influencing the health and well-being of Latinx youth residing in rural and small-town communities of the United States, a growing but understudied and underserved population.
Global Mental Health Databank (MindKind)
| The goal of this study is to learn how best to design a databank – a pool of data – about emotional health experiences from youth from around the world. The University of Washington is partnering with Sage Bionetworks to develop a user-friendly data platform for mental health interventions for youth. The overall scope of this project is to recruit 1,500 youth in South Africa, India, and the UK (each) to engage in a mental health intervention and both share their data and help co-design a user-friendly database for lay people, researchers and other key stakeholders. The University of Washington will provide global mental health expertise to Sage’s team to guide design, implementation, and interpretation of data collected. |
