Youth Engaged Community Based Participatory Research to Understand and Address Urban Environmental Issues

Background and Purpose: Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) has proven particularly effective in underserved communities in part because it deviates from the positivist scientific tradition and places high value on indigenous knowledge, different forms of expertise, and research that has practical benefits to community members. Though CBPR has been used successfully with a number of different marginalized populations, youth are still less likely to be included as research partners in CBPR. Further, the CBPR efforts that do engage young people often fail to meaningfully describe the youths’ roles in the research process and how they were affected by their participation.

In order to address this gap and better illustrate how CBPR approaches can be used in youth led community health initiatives in underserved communities, this presentation will focus an ongoing participatory research partnership between the Junior Green Corps, a Pittsburgh-based youth program, and social work researchers. The purpose of this research was to better understand how youth perceive their neighborhood environment and to engage youth actively in designing and implementing community change efforts. I will describe lessons learned from the partnership and discuss how the group successfully engaged youth in a community-university partnership to promote environmental health.

Methods: Youth were engaged in a participatory research partnership in which they co-led action-oriented efforts to understand and improve community health and well-being. A variety of research methods were employed including in-depth interviews, participatory photo mapping (in which youth designed and led neighborhood tours to document community conditions), and community design charrettes. The data were collected, analyzed, and disseminated in partnership with youth participants. This participatory, multi-method approach was used to simultaneously gather data and promote youth engagement and leadership.

Results: The results of this research suggest that youth bring a unique perspective to understanding how communities affect health. The youth reported that their active engagement in identifying problems and implementing solutions in their neighborhood was beneficial to them personally and to their community. They reported that they enjoyed seeing that their participation in the research changed the way that others in the community interacted with them. For example, one youth reported, “people that see us around the neighborhood, like, you see a lot of them smiling. Like lookin’, like thankin’ us…they see young people out here from the community doing this to better it.” The youth co-produced research that was featured in the local newspaper and several academic presentations, led numerous community clean-ups, and transformed several vacant lots into productive community spaces as part of their action efforts.  They also received a proclamation from the mayor of Pittsburgh for their efforts.

Implications: Among the most relevant aspects of the CBPR approach to social work is its commitment to draw upon strengths within a community and facilitate empowering processes that attend to social inequality. The results from this research illustrate how engaging young people can provide benefits for youth and their communities and suggests the importance of including youths’ unique strengths and perspectives in efforts to improve community health.