FAMILY-FOCUSED ADOLESCENT & LIFELONG HEALTH PROMOTION

Young people in Eastern Europe face risks to their health and wellbeing due to factors including violence, poverty, inequality, and other adverse experiences, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Programs focusing on the adolescent-caregiver relationship are an evidence-based solution to supporting adolescent health by addressing a cluster of common individual and family risk factors. Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) is one such program, developed for implementation and scale-up in low-resource settings. FLOURISH will adapt, implement, and evaluate the PLH Teens program. The program will be adapted to the service delivery and cultural setting of two countrywide health networks, in North Macedonia and Moldova, including the needs of the refugee populations from Ukraine. The program covers evidence-based skills, such as problem-solving and emotional regulation, for adolescents 10-14 years old and their caregivers. Through building skills and strengthening the adolescent-caregiver relationship, communication, and caregiver monitoring, the program has the potential to prevent and reduce multiple common mental health problems and risk behaviors, such as alcohol misuse, therefore reducing the risk of future non-communicable diseases. Informed by co-production with stakeholders and intervention process evaluation, FLOURISH will explore the cost-effectiveness of intervention components and test the final intervention package in a hybrid implementation-effectiveness randomized trial, as well as develop a scaling strategy informed by qualitative data and statistical modeling. The project will foster methodological innovation. FLOURISH will advance the uptake and scale-up of evidence-based, open-source, and sustainable family interventions for adolescents in low-resource settings, and therefore have a profound impact on reducing the risks for future non-communicable diseases.