The research groups led by Prof. Manfred Reichert (Institut für Datenbanken und Informationssysteme, DBIS) and Prof. Harald Baumeister (KLIPS, Institut für Psychologie und Pädagogik), both from Ulm University, are involved in the EU Horizon research project IMPROVA This project is developing an e-health intervention in secondary schools across Europe with the aim of improving mental health and mental health awareness and the early detection of mental health problems in young people. The Ulm researchers are particularly interested in the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, acceptance and utilisation as well as underlying impact factors of e-behavioural and e-mental health interventions.

The focus is on therapeutically accompanied and unaccompanied self-help interventions, the combination of routine care with online services ("blended care/therapy") and the development and research of new artificially intelligent e-health approaches. To this end, the IT platform eSano, developed by the Ulm researchers in previous works will be tuned to enable the co-creation of the IMPROVA online platform with stakeholder groups, including adolescents, parents, teachers, school health professionals and policymakers based on materials already designed and tested in more than 20 projects carried out by the consortium members. The platform will include components for adolescents, parents, teachers, and school health professionals in complementary and synergistic modules. After a series of pilot testing sessions, IMPROVA will be implemented by conducting a randomized Stepped Wedge Trial Design (SWTD) in secondary education schools randomly selected in four countries (France, Germany, Romania and Spain), including 12,800 adolescents. Effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit will be calculated. Using implementation science methodology, IMPROVA will co-design with policymakers and stakeholders transferable evidence-based practices, methodologies and guidance for upscaling of the IMPROVA platform.