Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Mar 10, 2025
Date Accepted: Jul 21, 2025
Addressing Mental Health Disparities in Youth Through Schools and Primary Care Clinics: Protocol for a Stepped-Wedge Trial of the Connected for Wellness Mobile App
ABSTRACT
Background:
Minoritized youth face greater odds of unmet mental health needs compared to their white peers and are disproportionately affected by the social determinants of health (SDoH). These inequities worsened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital interventions offer a promising solution to deliver quality mental health information, support, and resources, address stigma, and to help link youth and their families to mental health and SDoH-related services for improved wellness.
Objective:
This paper outlines an innovative protocol to implement and evaluate a mobile app called Connected for Wellness. Co-developed with youth and caregivers through community participatory informatics and utilizing machine learning, the app personalizes evidence-based emotion regulation skill tools and implements brief wellness assessments and digital linkages to supportive resources. We hypothesize that Connected for Wellness will enhance youth and caregiver self-care practices, help-seeking behaviors and engagement across the care continuum.
Methods:
Using a stepped-wedge design, our study involves youth aged 13-22 years and their caregivers from 10 high schools and 10 primary care clinics across two West Coast counties, primarily serving Latino, Black and Asian youth. The primary study outcome is change in youth engagement in mental health care following site-level app implementation of the Connected for Wellness app as a universal public health intervention.
Results:
This study was funded in August 2023 by the National Institute of Mental Health in response to the National Institutes of Health Common Fund Transformative Research to Address Health Disparities and Advance Health Equity initiative. The clinical trial phase will begin in early 2025 and is expected to conclude by June 2027.
Conclusions:
With their unrivaled ability to reach youth, school-based services and primary care clinics serve as ideal hubs for implementation of a mobile app that facilitates mental health engagement and prevention interventions. A successful study outcome would be implementing Connected for Wellness in these settings, providing an effective, acceptable and engaging mobile app and improving access to and engagement with mental health screening, referral and care through schools and primary care settings. Clinical Trial: NCT06122688
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Copyright
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