What Makes Prevention Work? Cultural Adaptation of an Effective Program for African-American Adolescents

Already in adolescence, substantial disparities between African-Americans and European-Americans regarding academic outcomes, mental health, and physical health like cardiovascular health exist. While these domains are often treated as unrelated, they influence each other in a way that the disparity in one variable increases the likelihood for disparity in the others. Depression, a very common mental health problem, plays a central role by impacting academic outcomes and cardiovascular health. Thus, a program that successfully reduces the likelihood for youths to develop depression should also reduce problems with academic outcomes and physical health and therefore reduce disparity in all three domains. Unfortunately, research demonstrates that European-American youth benefit more from programs preventing the development of depression than their African-American peers. Thus, the main goals of this research project are to (a) identify mechanisms that may result in differential prevention program effectiveness across youth race groups, and (b) adapt such a program (TIM&SARA) so youth from diverse racial backgrounds benefit similarly.

In this project, the depression prevention program TIM&SARA will be implemented as part of the normal school curriculum for freshmen in an urban high-school. The differential effects of the program on African-American and European-American youths will be examined using surveys and biological data in saliva.