# Project STRIVE (STudents RIsing above) - Offsetting the health and mental health costs of resilience

> **NIH NIH R37** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2024 · $669,725

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 Students in marginalized communities who `strive' to rise above adversity to achieve academic success
are considered `resilient'. However, youths' resilience in one domain (i.e. academic) can come at a cost in
other domains including physical and mental health morbidities that are under-identified and under-treated.
Previous research suggests that Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) who exhibit a “striving
persistent behavioral style” in the face of adversity evince later health morbidities. Ironically, the same self-
regulatory skills that promote academic achievement amid chronic stress can also result in physiological
dysregulation that harms health and mental health1–3. Self-regulatory processes that involve emotion
suppression, experiential avoidance, and unmodulated perseverance can culminate in allostatic load which
fuels health disparities1,4 and internalizing symptoms of depression and anxiety5.
 The proposed mechanistic trial will utilize mindfulness training to permit examination of questions about
the causal role of emotion regulation strategies linked to the striving persistent behavioral style in driving
mental health and health morbidities among BIPOC78. The proposed Project STRIVE (STudents RIsing
aboVE) will identify BIPOC students who are academically resilient in the face of disadvantage and will offer a
tailored mindfulness intervention targeting self-regulation processes as a putative mechanism to interrupt the
links between the striving persistent behavioral style and negative health outcomes. We propose a multisite
randomized trial randomizing 504 high achieving, socioeconomically disadvantaged Black, Latinx and Asian
American students in 18 schools to receive a mindfulness intervention or an attention control condition focused
on study skills. The study will: (1) test the effects of the STRIVE intervention on putative self-regulation
mechanisms (emotion suppression, experiential avoidance, and unmodulated perseverance) among. (2) test
the effects of the STRIVE intervention on health and mental health outcomes at 12-month post-treatment,
including biomarkers of allostatic load (cortisol, blood pressure, body-mass-index, waist/hip/neck
circumference), health complaints, and internalizing symptoms, and (3) examine the mechanistic model linking
striving persistent behavioral style and health outcomes within the STRIVE trial. If successful, this trial will
build toward a scalable, secondary preventive intervention with potential for preventing both health and mental
health disparities among underserved BIPOC youth at the population-level.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10832572
- **Project number:** 5R37MH128729-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Anna Shan-Lai Lau
- **Activity code:** R37 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $669,725
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-05-01 → 2027-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10832572

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10832572, Project STRIVE (STudents RIsing above) - Offsetting the health and mental health costs of resilience (5R37MH128729-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10832572. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*