As Principal Investigator of this study, Catherine Panter-Brick led an international Research Consortium to evaluate a humanitarian program implemented with Syrian refugee youth and Jordanian hosts.  For detailed information and outputs to-date, see http://www.elrha.org/map-location/yale-psychosocial-call2/

The study was funded as a partnership between academic and humanitarian organizations to strengthen the evidence base for public health interventions in humanitarian settings, under a funding call launched by the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) Programme, managed by ELRHA (http://www.elrha.org/map-location/yale-psychosocial-call2) on behalf of Wellcome Trust and DFID.  The partnership involved Mercy Corps, Yale University, We Love Reading, local community-base organizations, local families, and a number of scientific collaborators from Canada, UK, and US.

Our initiative focused on 11-15 year old Syrian refugee and Jordanian youth, living in five urban centers in northern Jordan.  The impact evaluation was a randomized controlled trial, measuring impacts of a profound stress attunement intervention on the mind, body, and brain.

Purpose:

Youth focused interventions in humanitarian crises have never measured stress alleviation such as changes in ‘stress under the skin’ or ‘toxic stress’ in the brain. This project is the first to evaluate the progress of the No Lost Generation programme with a mixed-methods study combining screening instruments, cognitive evaluations and biological markers of stress. Appraisals of such interventions are essential in order to understand their effectiveness and to inform potential scale up strategies.

Expected outcomes:

With a focus on stress alleviation in refugee youths this project aims to strengthen the evidence base for such interventions. Specifically, this project will provide a ‘proof-of-concept tool-kit’ that will support academic and humanitarian actors to make informed choices around innovative methods for project evaluation.