CLLAS will provide funding for a research project led by Dr. Blanche Wright, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, titled “Linguistically Appropriate Care for Newcomer Adolescents from Latin America: Implementing a School-Based Mental Health Intervention.”
The project will expand a school-based mental health intervention called STRONG, which stands for Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups. STRONG is designed to support newcomer youth as they adjust to school and community life in the United States. With CLLAS support, Dr. Wright’s project will expand the intervention beyond Spanish-speaking students to include Mam-speaking Indigenous newcomer adolescents, many of whom have roots in Guatemala.
The research will take place in Lane County, Oregon, in partnership with local school districts, including 4J, Bethel, South Lane, and Springfield. Dr. Wright will also work with Dr. Guillem Belmar Viernes and Dr. Gabriela Perez Baez from the University of Oregon Department of Linguistics, as well as Pueblo Unido and its Collective of Indigenous Interpreters of Oregon. These collaborators will help support training around linguistically appropriate care, interpreter collaboration, and the importance of Indigenous language preservation in mental health services.
The goal of the project is to better understand how schools can provide mental health support for newcomer adolescents from Latin America who come from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Through training, surveys, interviews, and a pilot implementation of STRONG, the research will examine how school providers, interpreters, students, parents, and school leaders experience the intervention. The findings will help identify ways to improve access to mental health care for Spanish-speaking and Mam-speaking newcomer youth while supporting more inclusive, culturally responsive, and linguistically appropriate services in Oregon schools.