Sibling-Support for Adolescent Girls (SSAGE): A study protocol for a pilot randomizedcontrolled trial of a whole-family, gender transformative approach to preventing mental illness among forcibly displaced adolescent girls

This study will assess a whole-family and gender transformative intervention-Sibling Support for Adolescent Girls in Emergencies (SSAGE)-to prevent mental health disorders
among adolescent girls in Colombia who were recently and forcibly displaced from Venezuela. The study will employ a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation pilot randomized
control trial (RCT) to test the program’s effectiveness to explore determinants of implementation to establish the feasibility, acceptability, and fidelity of SSAGE. To address these
aims, we will enroll 180 recently arrived, forcibly displaced adolescent girls in an RCT and
examine the program’s effectiveness in the prevention of mental illness (through reduction
in anxiety, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, and somatization symptoms) one-month
post-intervention. We will use contextually adapted to collect data on the hypothesized
mechanistic pathways, including family attachment, gender-equitable family functioning,
self-esteem, and coping strategies. The implementation evaluation will employ mixed methods to assess the program’s feasibility, acceptability, fidelity, and barriers and facilitators to
successful implementation.