Providence high schoolers help design a health program built for them

Her partnership with Young Voices reflects Brown's commitment to community-engaged scholarship, where faculty, students and staff work alongside local residents, nonprofits, schools and agencies. Similar collaborations have monitored neighborhood air quality, expanded the capacity of nonprofit organizations and led research aimed at strengthening Rhode Island's public school funding formula, among other projects.

"There is evidence that shows when projects include community voices, they are more relevant, more sustainable and more equitable," Durkin said. "It makes our research better, and it means the programs we're creating are more likely to work in the communities they're designed to serve because the people they're intended to help are involved from the start."

Introducing Providence teens to research

To structure teens' participation in the program, Durkin and Young Voices Executive Director Peter Chung created a Youth Advisory Panel, which includes more than two dozen Providence-area high schoolers. The reciprocal model trains and pays students as co-researchers and credits their contributions to the study.

Panel members have helped to define key study variables like diet quality and physical activity. They also selected covariates - additional factors the research team should consider when analyzing survey data - like sleep and mental health. For Durkin, the panel underscored how much insight, creativity and leadership teenagers can bring as research partners.

"People can really underestimate teenagers," Durkin said. "There's this assumption of, 'What would they know about research? What would they know about program development?' But when you get young people in a room, their perspectives are incredible. They're thoughtful, they're thinking long-term, they're thinking about inclusion, and they understand the real-life barriers affecting their health. They are researchers in this partnership because they are helping us see what the research needs to account for."

The students' roles also shaped how the research team communicates with teens. When Durkin drafted discussion prompts for study participants, panel members offered suggestions using language they believed other teens would understand and respond to.

"I had come up with all these focus prompts, and they immediately were like, 'They're too long,' or 'Nobody knows what that means,'" Durkin said.

For Lounay Oliver-Camacho, a sophomore at Providence's Mount Pleasant High School who hopes to become a special education teacher, participating on the panel offered an early look at the world of research. One of the biggest draws, they said, was the chance to complete research ethics training.

"I wanted to experience what that kind of training would look like before I do other training like it later on," Oliver-Camacho said.

Over two years on the panel, Oliver-Camacho said they have also learned new ways to think about data while connecting with Brown researchers and gaining confidence as a communicator and leader.

For Young Voices, the partnership extends its long-standing work empowering Providence high schoolers to shape decisions that affect their schools, neighborhoods and futures. Chung said the collaboration also reflects the organization's goal of connecting students with experiences that build practical skills and help them see how those skills can apply to their personal growth, education and future careers.

"If you're in high school now, you could walk into college already having research experience and you'd be eligible to apply to internships right off the bat," Chung said. "Those are the kinds of opportunities I seek for our students - and when partnerships are mission-aligned and value-aligned, we can build capacity and expand those opportunities for them."