Improving teen mental health and substance use by changing neighborhood and school policies
Official title: Systems Modeling to Improve Adolescent Health and Well-being
Funded at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences · NIH-11415849 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project uses data from thousands of teenagers to see whether changing neighborhood, school, and peer environments can reduce substance use and improve mental health.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Newark, UNITED STATES) |
| Project start | September 21, 2024 |
| Project end | June 30, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2025 |
| Award (this year) | $592,155 |
| NIH project number | 7R01MD019763-03 |
| Project ID | NIH-11415849 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates for follow-up or related projects are adolescents from the three North Carolina counties or similar rural communities experiencing school- and neighborhood-level disadvantage.
✕Less likely to help
Teens who live outside the studied regions or whose problems are driven mainly by individual medical conditions rather than neighborhood or school factors may not directly benefit from these policy-focused findings.
What this research studies
You can expect researchers to use long-term data from over 7,000 public-school students who were followed from middle school through high school in three racially diverse, mostly rural North Carolina counties. They link students' surveys to school records, criminal records, Census data, property assessments, and neighborhood maps to measure structural disadvantage and racism. The team will work with community partners using group model building and run computer simulations called agent-based models to project how policies like resource distribution, social integration, or school discipline changes might affect teens. The goal is to identify practical community and school policies that could help reduce substance use and improve mental health for adolescents in similar communities.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could point to community and school changes that lower teen substance use and improve mental health, especially in rural and racially diverse areas.
How similar studies have gone: Previous community and systems-level modeling has shown promise for guiding policy, but combining detailed peer-network panel data, geocoded neighborhood measures, and large-scale agent-based simulations is relatively novel.
Where this research is happening
-
Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences
Newark, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Taggart, Tamara — Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences
- Study coordinator: Taggart, Tamara
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.