Strategic Treatment and Assessment for Youth (STAY): Development of a culturally humble measurement-based care training

Despite high rates of mental health need, racial and ethnic minoritized (REM) youth are much more likely than their White peers to prematurely drop out of mental health treatment. Culturally tailored and flexible engagement models to improve mental health treatment retention among REM youth could begin to address longstanding treatment engagement disparities by race and ethnicity. Strategic Treatment Assessment for Youth (STAY) is a theoretically driven, culturally tailored measurement-based care (MBC) approach to treatment engagement for REM youth. A core aspect of this intervention is a cultural humility training for school and community clinicians who serve REM youth. This paper describes STAY, with a particular focus on its cultural humility component. Specifically, we discuss how the cultural humility approach was developed and highlight the role cultural humility plays within STAY. Finally, we discuss current refinement and piloting efforts to improve and examine the STAY intervention and cultural humility training, and future directions to use STAY in school and community settings.