262144 From data to action: Youth and adult co-researchers take their findings on the road

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Jamal Rasheed , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
Mariah Gardner , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
TaNeja Williams , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
Ayanna Parker , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
Dominique Parker , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
Johnny Brooks , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
Jakeemah Seals , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
Regina Jackson , East Oakland Youth Development Center, Oakland, CA
LeConte Dill, DrPH, MPH , Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA
Henrissa Bassey, MPH , Health and Human Development Program, WestEd, Oakland, CA
From 2009-2011, youth and staff leaders from the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC) participated in a community-engaged qualitative research study based in and about their inner-city neighborhood. Many of the youth were eager to find out what happened once their words went from the tape recorder to the page. As a result, these youth collaborated with the “academic” adult researcher to form a research collective called “My Identity is Community” or “MiC,” in which they created poetic texts from their interview data in order to make sense of their everyday lives and their home, school, and neighborhood environments. In May 2011, these poetic texts were co-published by the youth in the form of a poetry anthology entitled “Y U Gotta Call It Ghetto?” Since then, the youth leaders-turned-researchers-turned-published authors have literally taken their data on the road, presenting at academic conferences, City Hall, the State Capitol, community events, town hall meetings, public libraries, and bookstores, and doing television interviews. Poetry, and other expressive mechanisms, has been shown to draw out powerful emotions from historically under-represented groups that other methodologies might not be able to capture. As co-researchers in the study, EOYDC's youth leaders are acknowledged as “experts” on issues pertaining to their own neighborhood. This presentation gives the youth-adult research team another MiC with which to share their findings.

Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health education
Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Diversity and culture
Other professions or practice related to public health
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Describe the process of forming a community-based and –engaged research collective. Discuss three real-world benefits of engaging youth in research. Identify the utility of narrative analysis for public health research. Discuss the opportunities for youth to present research findings to a broad audience, including academic researchers, advocates, and policymakers.

Keywords: Community-Based Partnership, Youth

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been affiliated with the East Oakland Youth Development Center for 18 years (all of my life!). I was a participant and researcher in the MiC Collective, and a published author in the Y U Gotta Call It Ghetto? poetry anthology, and have been involved in disseminating the research findings.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.