Prof. Augsberger & BUSSW Student Researchers Partner with BUSM and Local Youths to Explore Health Inequities During COVID-19
A research project led by Boston University’s School of Social Work and School of Medicine is bridging the gap between health care institutions and community members by implementing a citywide youth advisory board at Boston Medical Center, BU’s teaching hospital and one of the city’s top health care institutions.
The youth advisory board follows a community engagement model that looks to young people to advise organizations on youth-focused policy and programs. According to Astraea Augsberger, the principal investigator and an assistant professor at BU School of Social Work (BUSSW), community engagement is “critical to developing and implementing relevant and racially responsive health care practice,” and young people are well-suited to the work. In addition to providing valuable feedback that can help health care institutions provide more effective care, advisory boards empower young people by inviting them to participate in institutional decision making that can have a direct impact on their lives and communities.
The youth advisory board at Boston Medical Center (BMC) had its beginnings in June 2020 with a BUSSW-led pilot project that aimed to give youth of color a seat at the table in health care policy. Following the pilot’s success, the board became one of several community advisory boards under BMC’s Equity Partnership Network.
The young people of color who made up the initial BMC youth advisory board kicked off their work with a project in Photovoice, a methodology that leverages photography to prompt participants to reflect on their social surroundings. Under the leadership of Prof. Augsberger, Katherine Gergen Barnett (co-PI) of the School of Medicine, and a team of BUSSW graduate student researchers, the youth advisory board members took a series of photos exploring what health or healthiness means to them and their community. By the end of the process, the youth identified four major themes from their photos: 1) taking health into their own hands, 2) toxic productivity culture, 3) the high cost of personal health resources, and 4) inequities in health policies and services. Their collective narrative characterized COVID-19 as “a revealing force that highlights systemic inequities, driving individuals and communities to both cultivate their resilience and take healthcare into their own hands in response to government and policy level failures.”
Reflecting on the project, youth advisory board member Osasenaga Idahor said the research team has two primary goals: “Firstly, we want our impact to be tangible change in the structure of health resources in Boston’s communities of color. Secondly, we hope that the impact of our research demonstrates the resilience of communities of color during the quarantine period of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The findings from the project were published in the Journal of Community Psychology in an article co-authored by Augsberger, Gergen Barnett, three BUSSW student and alumni researchers (PhD student Noor Toraif, PhD alum Noelle Dimitri and MSW alum Adrienne Young) and youth advisory board members Rosaylin Bautista, Ja’Karri Pierre, Catherine Le, Osasenaga Idahor and Calvin Jusme. The research was funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, and the Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute at Boston University.