Adolescent and Young Adult Health Justice Program

Adolescent

The Adolescent and Emerging Adult Health Justice Program focuses on developing and testing behavioral interventions to promote health justice among adolescents and emerging adults. The program includes several projects across the continuum of translation including early phase trials, clinical trials, effectiveness trials, and implementation trials. Studies have focused on improving health justice with behavioral interventions targeting conditions, such as asthma, obesity, diabetes, and HIV among minority adolescents and young adults. A growing initiative of the program, Scale It Up – Florida, seeks to develop a learning health community for sexual and gender minority youth and youth with HIV in Florida. Led by Dr. Karen MacDonell and Dr. Sylvie Naar, the Adolescent and Emerging Adult Health Justice Program involves internal and external collaborators, multiple funding sources, and its efforts aim to reach local (state of Florida) populations as well as nation-wide and international populations.

Program Leadership & Staff

Karen MacDonell, PhD, leads the Adolescent and Emerging Adult Health Justice program at CTBScience. Dr. MacDonell is an Associate Professor at FSU College of Medicine. She joined CTBScience in 2022. 

Sylvie Naar, PhD, is the co-lead of the Adolescent and Emerging Adult Health Justice program. Dr. Naar is the Director at CTBScience and Distinguished and Endowed Professor at FSU College of Medicine. 

Jonathan Morgan is the Scale It Up – Florida (SIU-FL) Program Administrator. Jonathan oversees and coordinates in research activities under the scope of the SIU-FL program alongside Drs. Naar and MacDonell.  

Grace Sanders is the Scale It Up – Florida (SIU-FL) Program Coordinator. Grace coordinates operational and administrative activities for research projects. 

Marie Denis-Luque, MSPH, MPH, joined the Adolescent and Emerging Adult Health Justice program and CTBScience in 2023. Marie will be leading research activities alongside Dr. MacDonell.  


Initiatives

HIV Prevention and Treatment Programs for Youth

This initiative addresses the translation of behavioral interventions for the prevention and treatment of HIV in adolescents and emerging adults,  includes T1 translation (the development of new intervention), T2 translation (clinical trials), T3 translation (effectiveness trials) and T4 I translation (implementation trials).  The initiative directly addresses the HIV epidemic in Florida as a collaboration between Scale It Up - Florida and the Florida Adolescent and Young Adult Sexual Health (FLASH) Network, a community-based research network of clinical and community partners participating in translational behavioral research studies.


Scale It Up - Florida Advancements in research and health care for adolescents and young adults are the result of youth-focused research initiatives. Scale It Up (SIU) Florida is a youth-focused, community-based research network consortium focused on HIV and other sexual health issues in adolescents and emerging adults (age 13-29) in Florida. SIU Florida addresses the translation of behavioral interventions for the prevention and treatment of HIV in adolescents and emerging adults. Read more about Scale It Up Florida.


Healthy Choices - HIV is an evidence-informed intervention. Adapted from Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), Healthy Choices is comprised of four 30-45 minute sessions that can be led by paraprofessional staff or other provider types to encourage antiretroviral treatment adherence and reductions in alcohol use and other substance use for youth living with HIV. Healthy Choices has also been shown to improve sexual risk behaviors and depression. The sessions are delivered over 3 months, typically week 1, week 2, week 8 and week 12. Other target behaviors relevant to self-management may also be addressed. The intervention is based on Tailored Motivational Interviewing (TMI). Motivational Interviewing (MI) is “a collaborative conversation style for strengthening a person’s own motivation and commitment to change”. Motivational Interviewing conversational style may also be thought of as guiding a person to change, rather than directing them to follow change. Healthy Choices is based on TMI, MI tailored with communication science studies of HIV clinic interactions to address target behaviors for persons living with HIV. Read more about Healthy Choices.


Tailored Motivational Interviewing - HIV is an evidence-informed intervention comprised of brief, single sessions that can be led by peer-level staff to encourage engagement and retention in care for persons with HIV to address a multitude of behaviors relevant to HIV prevention and treatment. TMI is MI tailored based on communication studies of HIV clinic interactions and adaptations of MI for young people (read Dr. Naar's book "Motivational Interviewing with Adolescents and Young Adults"). TMI can vary from a single brief encounter to multiple sessions based on client need and organizational context. Sessions in home-based or office settings can last 45 minutes to an hour, while sessions in medical clinics or street-outreach contexts may take 15 minutes or less. Learn more about this intervention here: More about TMI - HIV.

Community-Engaged Dissemination and Implementation Research

Community-engaged dissemination and implementation research (CEDI) focuses on research involving dissemination or implementation of evidence-based health interventions within clinical or community-based settings using community-engaged processes or partnerships.  It focuses on stakeholder input at each stage of the research process utilizing and addressing bioethical concerns using mixed methods designs and community/stakeholder advisory groups.

Preventing Comorbidity in Minority Young Adults

This initiative seeks to describe the general health behaviors that consistently underlie multicomorbidity in young adults of color (Physical Activity, Sleep, Smoking, Alcohol, and Nutrition), desribe stressors and teir relationship to health behaviors, to assess family history of comorbidity, and to assess pragmatic health outcomes. This project will look at young adults between the ages of 18-29 who self-identify as Black, Latinx or mixed race and live in the North Florida area. 


Active Projects

For a list of projects under the SIU-FL initiative, please visit the SIU-FL research page.

Fostering Institutional Resources for Science Transformation: The Florida First Health-Science Brigade 

Dr. Sylvie Naar (Co-Investigator)
NIH, U54

The University of Miami AIDS Research Center on Mental Health and HIV/AIDS – Center for HIV & Research in Mental Health (CHARM)

Dr. Sylvie Naar (Co-Investigator)
Subaward 
NIH, P30

(MUSC) Clinical trial of the fit families multicomponent obesity intervention for African American adolescents and their caregivers: Next step from the ORBIT initiative

Dr. Sylvie Naar (MPI)
Subaward 
NIH/NHLBI, R61

The ATHENA Project: Asthma and technology in emerging African American adults

Dr. Karen MacDonell (contact MPI)
Subaward 
NIH, R01

Exploring sustained implementation and fidelity of an evidence-based HIV prevention program

Dr. Karen MacDonell (MPI)
Subaward 
Primary: Dr. Bo Wang at University of Massachusetts 
NIH, R21

Optimizing an mHealth intervention to improve uptake and adherence of the HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in vulnerable adolescents and emerging adults

Dr. Karen MacDonell (MPI)
Subaward 
Primary: Dr. Bo Wang at University of Massachusetts 
NIH, R21/33

Adapting effective mHealth interventions to improve uptake and adherence of the HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in Thai young MSM

Dr. Karen MacDonell (MPI)
Subaward
Primary: Dr. Bo Wang at University of Massachusetts 
NIH, R34