# Mentoring to reduce substance use for youth in the juvenile justice system

> **NIH NIH K24** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · 2020 · $191,553

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT
The purpose of this K24 MidCareer Investigator Award is to support Dr. Marina Tolou-Shams, a child clinical
psychologist who has been continuously funded since 2007, to conduct research and to mentor others in
the areas of substance use, mental health, and co-occurring health risk behaviors for justice-involved youth.
This candidate proposes to utilize K24 support to a) expand her existing program of juvenile justice
behavioral health research into the field of digital behavioral health intervention and b) mentor junior PhD
and MD researchers in rapidly moving the science forward in identification and dissemination of ways to
improving substance use, mental and sexual health outcomes for youth in the juvenile justice system,
including the development and testing of digital health approaches for improved outcomes. Taking
advantage of a rich institutional environment, the candidate has assembled a group of expert
interdisciplinary collaborators to ensure that she and her mentees will be on the cutting edge of digital
behavioral health research with vulnerable populations. Digital mobile health (mHealth) technologies have
been increasingly demonstrated as an efficacious, low-cost way of reaching underserved, vulnerable,
populations to engage them into and/or deliver quality care. Mobile health therefore represents a promising
approach to improving substance use and psychiatric outcomes for justice-involved youth. Dr. Tolou-Shams’
research project will focus on conducting a pilot trial of a tailored SMS text-messaging platform to engage
court-involved, non-incarcerated (CINI) youth into substance use or dual diagnosis treatment services. Study
aims include 1) determining whether and how a tailored dyadic (youth/caregiver) SMS text-messaging
intervention increases CINI youth treatment engagement and 2) identifying real-world factors critical to
consider for justice and behavioral health systems eventual adoption and sustainability of an SMS text-
messaging intervention for youth treatment engagement. This K24 research and protected time for
mentoring will lead to ways in which the field will learn about how to develop, test and implement individual
and system-level digital health interventions for unmet juvenile justice substance use and mental health
treatment services needs across various points in the continuum of care (e.g., screening, referral, treatment
engagement, treatment delivery).

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9990770
- **Project number:** 5K24DA046569-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
- **Principal Investigator:** MARINA TOLOU-SHAMS
- **Activity code:** K24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $191,553
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-08-15 → 2024-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9990770

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9990770, Mentoring to reduce substance use for youth in the juvenile justice system (5K24DA046569-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9990770. Licensed CC0.

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