Moving Youth-Led Partnerships Forward in Community-Based Participatory Research: Lessons Learned in Asthma Research

Background/Purpose: This youth-led community-based research project is innovative and allows us to engage youth to paint a more nuanced picture of the strengths and challenges related to asthma community health in Homewood. Through the project we not only filled important gaps in knowledge related to asthma, asthma care, and asthma treatment in Homewood, we also captivated the minds of youth in science, research, and community action. This youth-led research builds upon the preliminary findings of the Healthy Living, Healthy Learning, and Healthy Lives (HL3) project, which included concept mapping, key informant interviews and surveys, in order to advance our understanding of children’s asthma in the community of Homewood and to design an intervention to address it. We evaluate both the process and outcomes of this research to determine the most important features for program success, program improvements and replication. 

Methods: This is a formative and summative process evaluation analyzing both the process and the outcomes of this youth-led community-based participatory research. We set out to identify the most important features for program success and program aspects we would change to improve the process and outcomes. Specifically, we examined the different inputs into the program as correlated to their differing outcomes. We also highlight those lessons learned by researchers to improve the overall quality and research process as we seek the most relevant and culturally specific interventions.

Results: We describe the most important factors for an effective youth-led community-based participatory research project, particularly a project with youth in underperforming high schools. We examine the following outputs and outcomes:  hours together (75 hours), mentoring from trusted adults ( 2), interview with students (10), interviews of medical professionals (3), meetings with community members (3), curriculum topics (4) and related tasks (12), transportation home, meals at meetings, size of student cohort (6), report of findings (2), research product/short film (1), incentive payments, and pre/post assessment (1).

Conclusions/Implications: This youth-led community-based research project significantly added to the overall contribution of community specific knowledge to create a relevant and culturally specific intervention for high school youth, in addition to improving the science skills, self-esteem, and educational trajectories of youth.  We seek to build upon the success of the Homewood Pitt-Bridge project as a way to both enhance community research and contribute to the social, academic and leadership development of local youth. We seek to adapt this research project to make it more effective in the future, particularly as part of a summer program or a high school course for college credit through University of Pittsburgh.