NCT05450094

Reducing Unmet Mental Health Need of African-American Children

Patient-Centered Enhancements to Reduce Unmet Mental Health Need of African-American Children

• Status: Enrolling By Invitation
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 19,106 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Florida · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 5 Years – 105 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to compare two versions of school-based mental health screening to improve the receipt of mental health services among elementary school students.

Detailed description

School-based mental health (SBMH) is a critical pathway for accessing mental health services for African American/Black (AAB) youth who experience the greatest gap in unmet mental health need in comparison to their White, non-Hispanic peers, but are twice as likely to access mental health services in schools as outpatient or specialty clinics. Unfortunately, AAB children's access to SBMH is dependent on school intervention team decision making, which often involves consideration of factors other than student need. School personnel on intervention teams disproportionately attribute AAB youth's behavior problems as disciplinary issues rather than mental health needs, reducing the likelihood AAB students receive SBMH services. Consistent with the empirical literature, patient families and stakeholders recommend universal mental health screening to better identify AAB children with mental health needs and enhancements to address implicit social cognitions that impact decision-making processes and poor mental health literacy of school personnel making intervention referral decisions. Thus, we will evaluate the comparative effectiveness of the SBMH delivery system enhanced with screening to a package of enhancements implemented with screening in SBMH to increase the likelihood AAB students receive the services they critically need. The enhancements include implementation supports, including training, coaching, and data-based feedback. We will test both whether and how (i.e., mediational analyses of causal pathway including knowledge, attitudinal, and behavioral observation of unintentional bias and mental health literacy) these enhancements impact student-level intervention and disciplinary referral outcomes. In a mixed method process evaluation and comparative analysis, we will also examine school-level contextual factors (i.e., team member tenure, pre-intervention discipline rates, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition of student body, and perceptions of intervention impact and acceptability) and implementation outcomes (i.e., fidelity, dosage/exposure, and reach).

Conditions

• Mental Health

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Screening Only	The Screening Only intervention integrates enhancements to school-based mental health (SBMH). Each school's typical SBMH service delivery system will be enhanced with biweekly meetings of voluntary school teams (comprised of administrators, school counselors, general and special education teachers, and other school-employed mental health professionals) to 1) follow standardized evidence-based intervention decision making process to identify students with mental health risk, plan and/or refer for an evidence-based intervention, monitor intervention progress, and adjust intervention plans as needed; 2) administer teacher-rated and student self-report universal screening twice annually; 3) review screening and related school records data to identify students with mental health risk; and 4) review screening, referral, and receipt data to monitor progress of entire SBMH service delivery system.
BEHAVIORAL	Enhanced Screening	The Enhanced Screening intervention involves the enhancements to school-based mental health (SBMH) of the Screening Only intervention with the addition of 3 empirically-based implementation supports, including training, coaching, and data-based feedback. Enhancement aim to increase school teams' awareness and understanding of students' mental health well-being and need for intervention. enhancements.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-11-01
• Primary completion: 2028-06-01
• Completion: 2029-02-01
• First posted: 2022-07-08
• Last updated: 2026-02-27

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States