Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Dec 7, 2023
Date Accepted: Feb 1, 2024
Providing LGBTQ+ Adolescents with Nurturance, Trustworthiness, and Safety (PLANTS): Pilot Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial Design
ABSTRACT
Background:
Sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY; lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, queer) face elevated risks of substance use and mental health issues compared with cisgender heterosexuals. These inequities are hypothesized to be reduced by building supportive high school environments via training of school staff. Experts, school staff, and SGMY developed Providing LGBTQ+ Adolescents with Nurturance, Trustworthiness, and Safety (PLANTS), an online intervention to train school staff how to support, affirm, and protect SGMY.
Objective:
This paper describes the design of the PLANTS Pilot Trial primarily aimed at assessing PLANTS acceptability, usability, appropriateness, and feasibility. Secondary objectives focus on implementation, safety, and pre-post changes in high school staff outcomes. Exploratory objectives examine PLANTS’ impact on student health outcomes.
Methods:
In a two-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial, high schools are allocated to PLANTS or an active comparator group (publicly available SGMY resources/trainings). High school staff complete pre-test and post-test surveys, assessing validated scales. Post-test surveys assess valid measures of acceptability, usability, appropriateness, and feasibility. Student-level data are collected via the 2021 and 2023 MetroWest Adolescent Health Surveys, a surveillance system in 30 Massachusetts schools, which assess health-related behaviors.
Results:
School enrollment began in May 2023 and participant enrollment began in June 2023. Data collection is expected to be completed by January 2024.
Conclusions:
Results from this pilot trial will yield important information about the PLANTS intervention and provide necessary information to conduct a fully powered trial of the efficacy of PLANTS for reducing the deleterious health inequities experience by SGMY. The implications of this research are pivotal in advancing strategies to counteract the adverse health inequities endured by SGMY, ultimately fostering healthier and more inclusive high school environments. Clinical Trial: NCT05897827
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.