My research centers on the Well-Being Promotion Program, a school-based mental wellness intervention aiming to increase middle-school students' happiness and well-being. Local middle-school students will complete a screening survey, and those eligible for the program will be randomly selected to attend weekly sessions for 10 weeks in small groups that will teach them tools for thriving emotionally, socially, and academically. The program also includes two caregiver-facing components: an information session that introduces caregivers to the program before the weekly sessions begin, and weekly take-home handouts that suggest ways caregivers can support their child's learning. My project aims to examine the experiences of both students and caregivers in the program to inform our team's knowledge of how acceptable the program is and how we can improve the program moving forward. Alongside the research team, I'll be analyzing students' exit interviews and caregivers' consent forms and survey responses for their perspectives on the program's effectiveness.

Our research is not only timely for the challenging period of middle school but also important given that schools may be the only place where students can access mental health services. To this end, the Well-Being Promotion Program is designed to promote well-being and self-discovery for middle school students by facilitating positive feelings and strengthening relationships at school and home. By pursuing this research project, I hope to obtain useful information about the intervention's acceptability to inform both immediate and ongoing improvements while promoting student and caregiver voices in shaping decisions that promote students' holistic well-being and education.