The COVID-19 pandemic has created an overwhelming shift to using technology to connect with others. Coinciding with a growing mental health crisis among youth, mental health therapy has been largely moved to digital spaces. Three years later, providers are having to choose if they will provide their services through in person, remote, or hybrid interventions. My initial hypothesis is that there will be access barriers for youth of certain demographics when utilizing digital interventions. I conducted a systematic literature review to look at the effectiveness of the use of digital mental health therapy services among adolescents using PubMed, PsychInfo, and UW Libraries databases. The journals assess barriers and facilitators of digital mental health services for youth. Articles are found through systematic searches using combinations of the MeSH terms ‘digital mental health’, ‘adolescents’, ‘accessibility’ and ‘depression’. The demographics of the adolescents are compared with their preferences for digital therapy. Preliminary results indicate that youth who identify as lower income, rural residents, or BIPOC will face greater barriers to accessing mental healthcare and may benefit from continuing digital therapy. This synthesis of peer reviewed journals will prove to be useful in helping providers move forward with their practice in a way that aligns with their client’s needs.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a rapidly evolving pathogen with no effective vaccine for eliciting broad protection against HIV infection. The HIV Envelope protein (Env) is a trimeric glycoprotein that is responsible for host-cell membrane fusion and infection initiation. As the only protein on the HIV virion surface, Env is the sole target for neutralizing antibodies. Characterizing the local structural dynamics of Env provides valuable insight into HIV host-virus interaction mechanisms. HDX-MS is an excellent tool for determining structural dynamics by measuring local backbone amide solvent accessibility. Generally, less structured protein regions uptake deuterium more rapidly compared to buried regions or those that are stabilized by secondary structure. We can use mass spectrometry to measure the kinetics of deuterium uptake for peptides throughout the Env protein. HDX-MS provides a detailed portrait of local structural dynamics and order, effectively identifying switching between completely closed prefusion and more open conformational states. A particular HIV Env isolate, A4, is of interest due to its unusually dynamic nature compared to other well-studied Env isolates, such as BG505. Dynamic Env exhibit more conformational flexibility, allowing them to sample various intermediary conformations between open and closed. We hypothesize that this attribute could increase HIV resistance to broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) that selectively target the closed Env conformation to prevent virus entry in immune cells. We may be able to correlate antibody binding to local dynamics measured in A4 versus BG505 Env trimers to verify this hypothesis. Biolayer interferometry will be applied to quantify antibody association and dissociation rates, as well as binding affinities. These studies will advance existing knowledge in Env-based vaccine therapeutics to improve immune responses to HIV.