The  42-month duration project “Prevention of Addiction and Mental Health in Adolescents in Georgia (PAMAd)” aims to improve the health and wellbeing of adolescents and young people affected by substance use and common mental health disorders through effective service provision.

Project Objectives and Contributions

The research will have five main objectives:

• to develop a phased and stratified service for Adolescents and young people affected by drug & substance use and common Mental Health (MH) problems, including those related to trauma (PAMAd service)
• to measure the clinical effectiveness and unit costs of the PAMAd service through assessment of MH status and drug related risk behaviors
• to determine the acceptability of the service to users;
• to describe how the PAMAd service works in the LMIC setting, what factors facilitate or hinder service implementation, and why PAMAd achieves or does not achieve its aims;
• to refine the service in the light of the findings of objectives 1-4 with a view to further development and scaling.

The study will assess effectiveness of the PAMAd through pre and post-test design without control groups with nested process evaluation. This offers a unique opportunity to use implementation research approach.