Optimizing Multi-level Interventions to Improve Child Mental Health in Azerbaijan

Associate Professor Leyla Ismayilova’s research, which targets a global mental health challenge, received $3.2 million in funding by the NIH. Ismayilova’s research team will study children aged 7-14 from low-income families in Azerbaijan who have experienced adversity, poverty, and prolonged trauma and mistreatment. While there are effective interventions aimed at individual, family, and structural-level factors, it is unknown how these interventions interact and complement each other, or whether their effects can be synergistic.

 Using a sample of 600 child-caregiver dyads, the research will refine and test three-evidence-based interventions on the children’s mental health outcomes and their cognitive and social processes, and any mediating pathways among the interventions. If successful, Ismayilova hopes the results can inform reforms implemented by the Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF, and other organizations in Azerbaijan and other post-Soviet countries.