Society of The Youth: Community engagement to find solutions for increasing youth physical activity

Background: The social and physical environments are thought to influence physical activity. Yet research has not compared the solutions community members in different contexts support for increasing youth physical activity.

Methods: Using a community-based participatory research process, a youth and adult community advisory group formed and met monthly to guide the research. Advisory group members ranged from 8 to 88 years of age, with meetings conducted in English and Spanish. The group named itself, established ground rules, refined the research question, helped design data collection methods, and were trained and hired to facilitate and record the concept mapping sessions.

Five aggregated scales were entered in cluster analysis to define the environmental contexts including: safety from crime, traffic safety, social cohesion, discrimination and incivilities. Data for these analyses came from surveys completed by 950 randomly selected households and walking audits of representative blocks in the five contiguous study neighborhoods.

Results: A three cluster solution showed high, medium and low rates of environmental support for physical activity. Residents were recruited from these three environments, answering the focus prompt, “What changes would you like to see to increase physical activity among youth 10-14 year old youth?” To date, advisory board members have conducted ten brainstorming sessions.

Conclusions: This community-based participatory research process holds promise for finding contextually relevant solutions for increasing youth physical activity, creating ownership of the solutions so they might be more easily translated into practice.