Grand Challenges: Encuentros: A University-Community Partnership to Mitigate the Mental Health Crisis for Latino Immigrant Youth

Grant Type: Team Project Grant
Topics: Social Justice, Health
Colleges Represented: SPHL, EDUC

Summary:

This team project will develop, implement, and evaluate an innovative community-driven program designed to address the youth mental health crisis in a vulnerable community (Grand Challenges Global Health priority). The project is specifically designed to address the mental health inequities faced by low-income Latino immigrant youth, who are dramatically and disproportionately impacted by structural racism, inequality, and discriminatory policies (Grand Challenges Social and Racial Injustice priority). As a community-driven research project, the study reflects the strengths of a six-year ongoing collaboration between faculty from the School of Public Health and the College of Education and Identity, a youth development organization in Montgomery County, Maryland. The project has three basic goals: to directly improve the health and well-being of low-income Latino immigrant youth in the state of Maryland; to empower Latino immigrant youth to manage the mental health impacts of trauma; and to build a sense of community and belonging for Latino immigrant youth. The team will innovate, test, and scale up a community-led intervention across the region, and eventually to disseminate an effective intervention model that improves mental health outcomes for youth in Latino immigrant families across the country.

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Leadership Team:

Amy Lewin (SPHL), Associate Professor, Family Science	Sophia Rodriguez (EDUC), Assistant Professor, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership	Kevin Roy (SPHL), Professor, Family Science

Partners:

Diego Uriburu, Executive Director, Identity, Inc.	Carolyn Camacho, Program Director, Identity, Inc.	Carmen Estrada, Director of Research and Quality Assurance, Identity, Inc.