Youth Health Promotion Challenge: Using a CBPR approach to address functional health literacy and type 2 diabetes prevention in African American and Latino adolescents

African American and Latino youth are at high risk for type 2 diabetes. Preventive behaviors have been proven to delay/prevent onset of diabetes, however, many do not adopt these behaviors due to psychosocial factors and their level of functional health literacy. Inadequate functional health literacy reduces the ability of adolescents to understand their risk for diabetes. The Youth Health Promotion Challenge (YHPC) was developed and conducted to increase health literacy and promote diabetes prevention in this population. Using a CBPR approach, the project's steering committee members were directly involved in the development, recruitment, retention, delivery and assessment of the YHPC. We used a pre/post randomized pilot study design to test the YHPC program. Forty-six African Americans and Latinos aged 14-17 years with a family history of diabetes were enrolled. The 6-session YHPC addressed: family history and risk for diabetes, health disparities, prevention of diabetes (e.g. physical activity and nutrition), diabetes etiology, and communication with family/health providers. Surveys assessed pre/post changes between the intervention and comparison groups at baseline and post program. The study retention rate was 84% at post-interview. Thirty-eight percent (38%, (n=16) of participants had a blood glucose reading >100 mg/dl and 61% of adolescents had a BMI-for-age and sex percentile of 85% or greater. At post-test, participants had higher mean scores in diabetes knowledge (4.52 vs. 4.00); self-efficacy (69.00 vs. 65.31); and health literacy (REALM Teen) (59.16 vs. 57.05). We believe the CBPR approach we used was a significant contribution to these successful results.