5 - (SYM 119) Community Engagement in a Supported Digital Health Intervention for Depression and Anxiety

The success of digital mental health interventions (DMHI) is highly dependent on engagement and use that is increased through support and coaching. Supporters from local community-based organizations are a resource that can help provide support for DMHI users, particularly in languages that are limited in mental health practice. However, working with community partners requires creating relationships with community organizations and building trust. In addition, community supporters need to become familiar with the specific DMHI and the supporter protocol. The SUPERA study is pairing Spanish-speaking patients in primary care who screen positive for depression and or anxiety with community-based supporters who can help encourage use of a DMHI (Silvercloud Health), address technical challenges, and identify needs for a referral or increased care. This presentation will qualitatively describe the process of connecting with a community organization, building trust, and training supporters. We took notes during biweekly supporter training meetings and coded them to extract key themes that arose, with an emphasis on facilitators and barriers to engagement in the intervention and coaching. We will highlight challenges such as technical and device problems as well as variability in digital literacy. We will describe our process and provide recommendations to address challenges that arise in meeting goals of both clinical research and communities. Findings from this study will help inform future work with community-based organizations helping to train community health supporters in the implementation of digital mental health interventions among disenfranchised communities.