eHealth Familias Unidas Mental Health: Protocol for an effectiveness-implementation hybrid Type 1 trial to scale a mental health preventive intervention for Hispanic youth in primary care settings

This article focuses on the rationale, design and methods of an effectiveness-implementation hybrid type I randomized trial of eHealth Familias Unidas Mental Health, a family-based, online delivered intervention for Hispanic families to prevent/reduce depressive and anxious symptoms, suicide ideation/behaviors, and drug use in Hispanic youth. Utilizing a rollout design with 18 pediatric primary care clinics and 468 families, this study addresses intervention effectiveness, implementation research questions, and intervention sustainment, to begin bridging the gap between research and practice in eliminating mental health and drug use disparities among Hispanic youth. Further, we will examine whether intervention effects are partially mediated by improved family communication and reduced externalizing behaviors, including drug use, and moderated by parental depression. Finally, we will explore whether the intervention’s impact on mental health and drug use, as well as sustainment of the intervention in clinics, varies by quality of implementation at clinic and clinician levels.