Mara Decker
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refugee and immigrant "newcomer" youth, who arrived in the United States within the last five years, often have mental health needs that go unmet. They face cultural and structural barriers to care, as well as discrimination, fear of deportation, and the stress of adapting to a new culture.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Social Science
- Topics
refugee youth
immigrant youth
newcomer youth
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Develop and refine Meet Me on the Pitch, a soccer-based mental health program for newcomer youth, with an enhanced referral network, using focus groups and key informant interviews with youth, coaches, and community members.
- Assess whether refugee and immigrant youth find the coach-delivered program feasible and acceptable, using longitudinal surveys of program quality.
- Measure the program's short-term effects on mental health, health care access, school engagement, and social connection in a randomized controlled trial with 480 newcomer youth.
More about the research
Many live in lower-income communities. Social determinants of health (SDoH), the conditions where people live, learn, and play, drive much of this gap. Reaching these youth may mean bringing support to places they already trust.
Why it matters
Refugee and immigrant youth who struggle to access mental health care could gain an easier entry point through the sports teams and coaches they already know. If effective, coach-delivered support and referrals could offer a model for preventing and screening for mental health problems in communities. It could also improve health equity for underserved youth nationwide.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Arthi Rao
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Engineering
Refine socioecological theories of transportation disadvantage and its effect on healthcare access through extensive engagement with community, health-system and industry stakeholders.
Juan Cardet
University of South Florida, FL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether Black and Latinx adults with moderate-to-severe asthma have distinct SDOH exposomes, sets of social and environmental exposures, that link to worse asthma, using PREPARE trial data with geocoded SDOH measures.
Gayenell Magwood
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refine the iCINGS FAM intervention through interviews and focus groups with rural community stakeholders, so that it fits individual, family, community and social needs for managing illness as a dyad.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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