Engaging Latino Youth in Health Equity Research
Rationale/Background. Israel and colleagues’ (2013) components of Community Based Participatory Research provide a framework to highlight youth participation throughout the research process. These components are 1) partnership formation and maintenance; 2) community assessment and diagnosis; 3) definition of the issue and design and conduct of research; 4) feedback interpretation, dissemination, and application/translation of results. Individual empowerment that results from participating in the research process can occur for youth, which is especially important for Latino youth who have been reported to be less civically engaged than others. Factors that can be barriers to community engagement include educational level, poverty, lack of role models, and immigration status.
Brief description of the undertaking. During partnership formation, Latino youth participated in a logo design contest for the coalition and four youth from local communities were invited to join the coalition. During the community assessment phase, youth members participated in the community assessments of focus groups and a Photovoice project on youth perspectives on teen pregnancy. During the design and conduct of research, youth participated in a study to evaluate the acceptability of a culturally-relevant parenting intervention using interactive youth theater to facilitate Latino parent-adolescent communication about sexuality and pregnancy prevention. A youth coalition member for her college capstone participated as a research assistant to recruit participants and collect and analyze data. During the dissemination and application/translation of results phase, youth participated in presentations and publications to the community via local magazines and newsletters and presented at health care conferences. They participated in the creation of a calendar of photos from the Photovoice project.
Outcomes achieved. The logo contest helped to begin to engage youth and raise community awareness of the issue and presence of the coalition. Educational stipends were provided to youth coalition members. Youth members participated in design and the format of the focus groups. They presented the issue of teen pregnancy to the community and reported findings from the Photovoice project to the community. The youth brought inside knowledge of their community to the coalition; participation in coalition activities further increased their understanding of issues in the community. The youth reported increased ability to speak publicly and enhanced focus on career directions from participation.
Conclusions: There were multiple benefits in engaging youth in CBPR. Their input provided increased relevance and context to understanding the issue. They increased the integrity and validity of the research design through contributing to the design of the community assessments and to the intervention design for the theater research study. There were also multiple individual benefits to the youth. Careful planning can help to mitigate the challenges of working with youth. Community-based partnerships working with youth should consider documenting the individual and collective impact of community engagement for the youth from the onset of participation.