Youth Leading the Way To Health Through Research and Service

Youth are often overlooked as an asset when planning and implementing programs to improve health. However, when engaged, youth often have unique perspectives and solutions to health problems. Moreover, their involvement empowers them and their peers to become agents for positive change. This is especially important in environments where youth are dis-empowered and where the opportunities and examples for achieving negative attention (e.g. criminal activity) are far greater than those for positive behavior. In this session we will explore the barriers to involving youth in community based participatory research (CBPR) and other health projects, along with methods for overcoming these barriers. We will then examples from the Native Health Initiative's youth projects to illustrate the logistics of creating such opportunities. Specifically, youth involved in the Native Youth Leading the Way Through Research and Service (NYLWTRS) project will present on their work to research the assets and needs in their Albuquerque community using CBPR methods, along with the service project they created in response to their findings. This project will not only give participants a sense of how to involve youth in health programs, but also serves as a unique example for combining CBPR/research and service to allow communities to more clearly see the beneficial effects of research.