Building healthy minds and bodies through community partnerships: The Youth Empowerment for Success YES! Sí Se Puede Project

Background: Latinos are America's largest ethnic minority and the fastest-growing demographic of our nation, however they are at high risk for poor academic and health outcomes. According to the US Bureau of the Census only 9.8% of foreign born and 13.5% of US born Latinos earn a bachelors degree, representing the lowest high school and college completion rates of any racial or ethnic group. Latino children are also at higher risk for overweight, obesity, diabetes mellitus, and asthma than white or black youth. The Youth Empowerment for Success (YES!) Sí Se Puede project aims to reduce academic and health disparities among this group. Recent research offers evidence that the challenges presented by urbanization are best addressed by broad-based collaborative community partnerships. This project works through a university-middle school-YMCA alliance to address self-esteem, mental health, physical activity and nutrition beliefs and behaviors, violence prevention, academic reinforcement, computer and technology use, cultural enrichment, and career development for a group of at-risk Latino youth. Methods: Qualitative data from Community Advisory Group meeting minutes, the original grant proposal, and quarterly progress reports will be used to identify partner roles and selection criteria, challenges to project implementation, and how obstacles were addressed. Data and quotes from parent pre and post program interviews and well as youth post-workshop evaluations will be used to illustrate participant perspectives of the partnership. Results: Roles of community partners will be described, a list potential barriers to collaboration identified, and preliminary results from youth and parent perspectives will be presented.