Public Health in the Rockies 2026

Traditional mental health research has often limited the involvement of underrepresented groups, including youth, in research development, limiting the applicability of findings and reinforcing inequitable power dynamics. Although evidence demonstrates that engaging youth in all phases of the research process improves relevance, youth participation remains limited to passive roles rather than active partners. Many initiatives sparingly involve youth, rather than full collaboration in all stages of the research process.

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), a specific type of Community-Based Participatory Research focused on youth engagement, seeks to address these inequities. Project YAM (Youth-engaged Approaches to Mental Health) is a qualitative research study focused on using YPAR approaches to explore youth engagement frameworks for mental health settings. We took a unique youth-adult collaborative approach to qualitative YPAR by completely integrating youth researchers as team members in all project phases.

In this skill-building session, we will examine contextual barriers and facilitators to youth engagement in public health settings with a focus on integrating youth into qualitative research and evaluation teams. Attendees will gain experience in utilizing a bidirectional youth-adult partnership approach to co-create strategies for effective youth engagement. Our youth facilitators will support attendees in tailoring YPAR methodology to integrate youth in the projects and settings relevant to attendees.

Our study was co-developed with a youth co-PI, who formulated the research question and co-led the successful submission of a grant proposal. We recruited and hired a team of five youth researchers, and completed youth-focused research ethics and qualitative methods training. Youth-adult teams completed interviews, with youth facilitating and taking field notes. Data analysis utilized a co-led qualitative rapid matrix approach. By embedding youth voices, we enhanced and made significant modifications to our qualitative research procedures leading to more precise, youth-tailored results that have a better chance at improving youth engagement efforts. Consequently, we developed a “roadmap” for youth participation in all phases of the qualitative research process.

Throughout the presentation attendees will engage in small group discussion guided by reflective questions and interactive case studies intended to support application of skills learned in the session to real world situations. Each activity builds on presented knowledge and skills culminating in an actionable roadmap that can be implemented as a practical guide for incorporating YPAR in their organization. This roadmap outlines key stages, including detours highlighting common challenges along with strategies for navigating them and fast lanes, like existing partners/tools that can accelerate the process. Application questions will prompt attendees to reflect on how and why they want to engage in YPAR, helping them clarify purpose, readiness, and next steps for their team

By centering youth engagement and applying YPAR approaches, we were able to innovate a process for integrating youth into qualitative public health research. The roadmap presented and applied in this workshop provides infrastructure to embed and leverage youth’s lived experiences and insights to produce meaningful participation. Applying this roadmap and considering novel forms of youth engagement has the potential to co-create equitable and tailored solutions for youth.