Engaging Youth in Food Activism in New York City: Lessons Learned from a Youth Organization, Health Department, and University Partnership

Abstract

Research indicates that insufficient emphasis on community collaboration and partnership can thwart innovative community-driven work on the social determinants of health by local health departments. Appreciating the importance of enhancing community participation, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) helped lead the development of the Health Equity Project (HEP), an intervention aimed at increasing the capacity of urban youth to identify and take action to reduce food-related health disparities. DOHMH partnered with the City University of New York School of Public Health and several local youth organizations to design and implement the intervention. HEP was conducted with 373 young people in 17 cohorts at 14 unique sites: six in Brooklyn, six in the Bronx, and two in Harlem. Partnered youth organizations hosted three stages of work: interactive workshops on neighborhood health disparities, food environments, and health outcomes; food-focused research projects conducted by youth; and small-scale action projects designed to change local food environments. Through these activities, HEP appears to have been successful in introducing youth to the social, economic, and political factors that shape food environments and to the influence of food on health outcomes. The intervention was also somewhat successful in providing youth with community-based participatory research skills and engaging them in documenting and then acting to change their neighborhood food environments. In the short term, we are unable to assess how successful HEP has been in building young leaders who will continue to engage in this kind of activism, but we suspect that more extended interactions would be needed to achieve this more ambitious goal. Experiences at these sites suggest that youth organizations with a demonstrated capacity to engage youth in community service or activism and a commitment to improving food or other health-promoting community resources make the most suitable and successful partners for this kind of effort.

Mobilizing Young People in Community Efforts to Improve the Food Environment: Corner Store Conversions in East Los Angeles

“…Participants also described how the project helped them develop leadership and public-speaking skills that resulted in increased self-efficacy and confidence in advocating for changes within their families and community. These outcomes are similar to what have been identified by other youth-engaged participatory research efforts, 57,63,73 thus reinforcing the unique opportunities a youth-focused approach to research has for building capacity and mobilizing community members on health issues.…”

“…As reflected in prior studies, the students recognized that dietary habits are shaped by social and environmental factors, including household norms and behaviors, transportation, availability of healthful food, convenience, and cost. 28,[63][64][65][66] A common theme in the focus groups was the lack of access to healthful food coupled with an abundance of affordable, unhealthy food. 57 Students also recognized that neighborhoods are segregated by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic factors, and this segregation creates disparities in access to higher-quality, more healthful foods.…”

Multi Level Education Katoga Improve The Competence of Health Cadres, Public Figure, and Family in Preventing, Early Detection and Handling Pregnancy Emergency

“…Strategic alignment and evaluation results inform each other in a gradual transformation process (Ali, 2009). The results are also synergized with the findings of Tsui et al, 2012, which concluded that community collaboration and partnership is one innovative work community based on determinants of social health.…”

Kentucky Teen Institute

“…Youth may prove to be important change agents for their communities, as researchers have found training youth to be community leaders is an effective strategy for improving public health (Curran, Ned, & Winkleby, 2014; Jones, Spence, Hardin, Clemente, & Schoch, 2011; Tsui, Bylander, Cho, Maybank, & Freudenberg, 2012; Wyman et al, 2010). Public health advocacy is central to health promotion, and programs focusing on skills development of youth in this area are central to effective practice.…”