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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Bethann Witcher, PhD, Clement Jeffers, MPH, and Maria Fontenelle, MPH. Dekalb County Board of Health, 445 Winn Way, Decatur, GA 30031, 404-508-7790, drbwitcher@earthlink.net
For two consecutive summers, The Dekalb County Board of Health hired Clarkston youth as Research Assistants for an eight-week part-time summer employment. These twenty youth, representing 14 different ethnic groups, conducted participatory research utilizing Photovoice; a process by which they used cameras and written articles to document youth identified county health issues of pollution, education, teenage pregnancy and substance abuse. After taking pictures, conducting interviews and researching their topics, they put together Power Point presentations. Presentations were then made to county stakeholders such as government officials, the board of health and health related task forces, thus giving voice to the voiceless youth of our society. At the end of the summer, a semi-structured interview was conducted with each participant to evaluate the impact of the program on their perceptions of self, health, community, and acquired skills. The data delineate the individual empowerment and community building effect of the Photovoice process, an adaptation of the problem-posing, self-discovery and action producing methodology introduced by Paulo Freire. The Photovoice methodology, the results of the experience on the youth’s self-perception, life skills development and community involvement as well as their impact on community stakeholders will be discussed.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Youth, Community-Based Health Promotion
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.