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

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A University-Community Partnership to Help Latinx Immigrant Youth Thrive
October 12, 2023

This team project is developing, implementing, and evaluating an innovative community-driven program designed to address the youth mental health crisis in vulnerable communities. 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. As a community-driven research project, the study reflects the strengths of a six-year ongoing collaboration between faculty from UMD's 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 disseminate an effective intervention model that improves mental health outcomes for youth in Latino immigrant families across the country.