Targeted Condition: General Mental Well-Being

Expanding culturally responsive care for children and families in Washington State

The Expanding Culturally Responsive Care initiative, a new project funded through a 2022 Washington State legislative proviso, aims to strengthen the lived experience behavioral health workforce and create a culturally responsive care curriculum for statewide implementation in Medicaid-serving organizations. This initiative was developed in response to Washington State’s urgent need for more culturally responsive, effective public behavioral health services–services that many families do not currently have access to. Ideally, this initiative will allow for more families to receive care that promotes true healing, mental health wellness and health equity. Curriculum and strategy development will be done through a participatory, collaborative co-design process with broad ranging input from across the state, and will center community voice, transparency, and accountability throughout all stages of the process. This project is part of a broader Leadership Initiative for Quality.

Opportunity Based Probation

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.

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.

Affective Dynamics Associated with Simultaneous Alcohol and Marijuana Use Outcomes among a High-risk Sample of Young Adults

The proposed F32 aims to conduct a secondary analysis of time-intensive daily data (MPIs: Lee/Patrick; R01AA025037) to elucidate the roles of affect and affective dynamics on simultaneous alcohol and marijuana (SAM) use outcomes among a sample of high-risk adults (N = 409). We will test whether theoretically-relevant affective dynamic processes (affective instability, negative emotion differentiation): (1) are more useful for predicting SAM use and alcohol use than mean level of affect (within- and between-subjects); (2) prospectively predict changes in SAM use and use-related problems over time; and (3) can distinguish SAM use from single substance use patterns, which has direct implications for the personalization and precision of prevention and intervention efforts.

High potency cannabis policy legislative report

Explore and suggest policy solutions in response to the public health challenges of high tetrahydrocannabinol potency cannabis. ADAI will host stakeholder sessions to gain perspectives, seek common ground, evaluate, and assess potential policy solutions culminating in a final recommendation report.

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.

Communication and Recovery Enhancement (CARE) clinical trial

This study aims to refine and test a brief intervention (CARE) that aims to promote recovery in recent sexual assault survivors. CARE is delivered to supporters of sexual assault survivors (e.g., friends, family members, romantic partners), with or without the survivor present. It aims to encourage conversations about the assault and decrease negative reactions by the supporter. In stage 1 of this study, we will conduct feedback sessions with 8-10 dyads of survivors and their supporters to finalize the intervention materials. In stage 2, we will conduct a pilot clinical trial of CARE with 60 dyads, who will be randomized to dyadic intervention, supporter-only intervention, or waitlist control.

Initial efficacy trial of a group-based implementation strategy designed to increase teacher delivery of evidence-based prevention programs

The purpose of this project is to test the effects of BASIS-T (Beliefs and Attitudes to Support Implementation in Schools – Teachers) on the implementation and student outcomes of evidence-based prevention programs (EBPP) via a hybrid type 3 implementation-effectiveness trial. Failing to address individual-level motivational factors of implementers is especially costly, as individual behavior change is ultimately required for successful EBPP implementation, even when organizational factors such as evidence-informed policy, supportive leadership, and effective training are in place. Hybrid type 3 trials allow for testing the effects of implementation strategies, as well as observing the reproducibility of particular EBPPs — in this case, CHAMPS, a universal classroom management program for improving student social, behavioral, and academic outcomes.