PROJECT SUMMARY
Transgender youth face a high risk for serious mental health problems (e.g., suicidality, depression, anxiety)
relative to cisgender youth due to their disproportionate exposure to transphobic discrimination and trauma,
and significant barriers to mental health care. mHealth interventions have been developed to address the
needs of transgender youth and their caregivers, but are underutilized. Lay health worker (LHWs) are
individuals who use their lived-experience, language and/or culture to support patients and/or families in
mental health service access and engagement. In response to PAR-22-109 and NIMH Strategic Objective 4:
Strengthen the Public Health Impact of NIMH-Supported Research, we seek to increase mental health care
access for transgender youth by enhancing the dissemination of evidence-based mHealth interventions
through the design of a gender-affirming training intervention for LHWs, with cultural tailoring for transgender
youth of Color and their caregivers. Specifically, we will use human centered design (HCD) to adapt a gender-
affirming mental health provider training intervention (developed by MPI Price K23MH124670) based on data
from MPI Barnett (R01MH117123-02S1) on the needs of transgender youth of Color and their parents
receiving LHW services. The proposed R21 study involves working with community partners (i.e., transgender
youth, their parents, and LHWs) to (Aim 1) co-design a mechanism-driven gender-affirming training
intervention for LHWs, then (Aim 2) build the gender-affirming LHW training intervention via usability testing.
This study will result in an acceptable and refined training intervention ready for testing in a large, multisite R01
study.
