142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

306974
Where You're From and Where You're At: One Community Setting as an Incubator for Healthy Communities and the Reduction of High-Risk Behaviors

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Raphael Travis Jr., DrPH, LCSW , School of Social Work, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
Joshua Childs , Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Healthy adolescence is a balance of individual strengths within a network of environmental supports and opportunities. This combination of personal and environmental features contributes to the health and well-being of young people. Empowerment-based Positive Youth Development (EMPYD) is a conceptual model that specifies features of this person and environment interplay while highlighting how a sense of community and active and engaged citizenship are necessary and reinforcing features of healthy development (Travis & Leech, 2013; Gibbs & Bankhead, 2000; Lee, 2011). The present study (a) examines model parameters, (b) describes contributing features of a youth development and civic engagement program, and (c) examines the relationship between positive development and inhibited risk behaviors. Research involved new data collection and sample recruitment with a final sample of 111 participants. The one-week youth program in the summer includes middle and high school students from different regions of a southern state.

Research questions ask: (1) in what ways does the program facilitate healthy development among youth? (2) How well does EMPYD predict substance use/risky behaviors among participants at the end of the program? Results suggest that all indicators of healthy development increased, except for character. The most significant increases were in confidence, competence, sense of community and active and engaged citizenship, a community of change. Factors explained 65% of the variability in risky behavior. Findings suggest EMPYD is a promising model for understanding healthy development amidst risk, anchoring youth development and civic engagement strategies, and measuring dynamics between person and environment.

Learning Areas:

Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Program planning
Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Discuss a new model of healthy development within the context of prior efforts to describe healthy adolescence and the life-course. Evaluate these model pathways to identify targets for health promotion and prevention. Explain how youth programming features can coalesce into a community of change that influences the health of multiple communities.

Keyword(s): Adolescents, Community-Based Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been the principal or co-principal investigator of funded and non-funded research focusing on the principles of positive youth development, strategies to promote adolescent health, and individual and community empowerment. The current research questions are direct extensions of my established line of published research.
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.