Project Overview
This intervention involves community members and youth leaders assessing child and youth thriving in their neighborhood, using a community-developed Child/Youth Thriving Matrix tool to engage in structured dialogue on neighborhood transformation, racial and gender equity, youth engagement, and organizing for social change. Findings from discussions will inform youth engagement in racial and gender justice activities in the context of this pandemic and offer a prototype for a community-level intervention to help mitigate the consequences of a pandemic, systemic racism, and structural inequities.
Principal Investigator(s)
Research Aims
This study will assess feasibility of this Child/Youth Thriving Matrix tool as a community-based, multi-level intervention to promote neighborhood resilience and prevent youth violence.
In Aim 1, we will evaluate feasibility of implementing Child/Youth Thriving Matrix within two neighborhoods (i.e., >80% retention of participants through all sessions; satisfaction scores > 4.0 (range 1-5); identification of at least three areas of focus for enhancing child thriving). Two other matched neighborhoods will be offered an individual mindfulness intervention as a control condition (final anticipated n = 80 participants/arm).
Aim 2 will explore appropriateness of measures to evaluate intervention effects on individual- and neighborhood-level collective efficacy, emotional well-being (including mental health and social isolation), and youth violence, in preparation for a larger trial to test this community-level intervention.
These research objectives build on infrastructure of the parent study (Creating Peace: community-based youth violence prevention to address racism and discrimination (R01MD013797, PI: Miller)). The goal of this project is to optimize a community-designed, community-level intervention to address structural inequities that have become all too apparent during this pandemic with an emphasis on neighborhood strengths and building resilience.