Young people in low- and middle-income countries are often neglected in designing youth-friendly health services, especially HIV testing and preventive services. Designathons, which are time-bounded ...co-creation events where individuals gather in teams to develop solutions to a problem, could promote youth participation and ownership of health services.
The purpose of this study is to examine youth participation in a designathon to create youth-friendly health services in Nigeria.
Our designathon was based on crowdsourcing principles and informed by a human-centered design approach. The designathon included an open call for Nigerian youths between 14 and 24 years to share ideas on how to promote uptake of HIV self-testing services and a three-day sprint event that brought together diverse teams to develop strategies enhancing linkage to care. Teams pitched their solutions to a panel of five independent experts who scored ideas based on the desirability, feasibility, potential impact, and teamwork. We used descriptive statistics to summarize participants' demographics and conducted a content analysis to synthesize themes from youth proposals.
Nine hundred seventy-six youth across Nigeria applied to join the designathon. Forty-eight youth in 13 teams participated in the designathon with a median age of 20 years (IQR: 17-22. Boys and young men were 48.5% (446/919) of the total applicants, 62.5% (30/48) of the designathon participants, and 63.6% (7/11) of the finalists. Students, from all educational levels, represented 91.2% (841/922) of the total applicants, 88.4% (38/43) of the designathon participants, and 90.0% (9/10) of the finalists. About twenty-three percent (3/13) of the final proposals were top ranked. The three finalist approaches to optimize youth-friendly health services centered on decentralizing service delivery to young people through mobile health technologies, use of mobile tents, or peer support services.
Our open call engaged diverse groups of Nigerian youth, including young women and students. Our data suggest that designathons may be useful for developing tailored youth-friendly health services. Further research is needed to understand the designathon process and the effectiveness of the finalist submissions.
Climate change and youth participation are emerging as important clarion calls today. Indeed, very few individuals will possibly counter a call for the involvement of young people in decisions and ...actions which (in)directly affect their lives. Presently, some of the greatest social problems faced by young South Africans are COVID-19, employment, and climate change. These challenges require the active participation of young people—locally known as the “born frees”—in the construction and operationalization of interventions, especially in light of the insufficient (sub)national response. That being said, policymakers often adopt top-down over bottom-up approaches, with the young generation often excluded or at best given a tokenistic role in climate decision-making processes. Therefore, this paper suggests some new ways of conceptualizing youth agency and brings to light how the born frees could efficiently take part or have a say in negotiating the path to climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation. By drawing from the existing literature, the paper concludes that effective engagement with youth is essential in empowering them to key stakeholders or partners in adapting and/or mitigating climate change.
This article analyzes the role of the state youth policy of Azerbaijan in supporting young people through their transition from school to work, which is one of the stages when young people can be in ...particularly fragile situation if not provided with necessary opportunities. The reason for studying the case of Azerbaijan is a considerable share of youth Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET youth) among the country’s youth community. The NEET indicator is considered as a comprehensive indicator within the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda to measure youth exclusion and marginalization. The findings of this research demonstrate that while the government assumes a broad responsibility to provide youth with education and employment opportunities to support their transition, these intentions have not been translated into real actions. An alarming situation of the country’s youth population is at risk of further exacerbation due to poor understanding of local realities by such global advocates for youth development as United Nations. We discuss this considering the flaws in the operationalization and localization of the concept of the “youth participation” promoted by the United Nations to advance youth interests.
The emergence of digital technologies and a more global and digital society has brought about the need to develop and educate in Digital Citizenship, as well as to study how youth are taught to ...participate and learn citizenship in a digital age. This paper aims to explore the role of digital and socio-civic skills development, as facilitators for youth participation and analyses the relationship between sociodemographic variables (sex, age, educational level, and political ideology) with the participatory profile of participants. This is a study with a quantitative methodology, where, based on non-probabilistic convenience sampling, 534 young people between 16 and 35 years old from Spain, completed an online questionnaire regarding the development of digital and socio-civic skills. The results indicate how a participant’s participatory profile is related to other variables. In addition, significant differences are observed between the different participation profiles and digital and socio-civic skills, underlining that the development of digital and socio-civic skills are essential for educating in digital citizenship.
Drawing on the PARTISPACE research (www.partispace.eu) and particularly on findings from three of eight European cities included in the study, this article brings to the surface the dramatic and ...theatrical practices underlying the metaphor of performance in order to contribute to a better understanding of youth work and youth participation. It considers the spaces, temporalities, actors and audiences, and atmospheres of youth participation projects. Youth workers and young people in these space/times can be seen as actors in the drama of participation; cast in their roles and caught up in power play, both small scale and sometimes on a larger political stage. The micropolitics of group inclusions and exclusions which are pushed beyond the boundary in Youth Council spaces take centre stage in the drama of the Youth Club. Attention to ambivalence in the work of youth workers leads to a discussion of the needs of such pedagogues.
Youth can be valuable partners in community health improvement efforts. Latino youth from Lawrence, MA were engaged in research and health promotion over an 11-month period. Utilizing their knowledge ...of the community, youth assessed local parks and carried out evidence-based health promotion efforts to communicate community resources to encourage physical activity, nurture community ownership of parks, and advocate for park improvements. Health promotion efforts can engage youth in strategies to address critical public health issues by leveraging their unique perspective and distinct location within communities. The communications developed by the youth were distributed within the community, benefiting residents directly. Youth were motivated to engage in the project by a sense of civic obligation, and upon completing the project, they expressed that they had gained research and communication skills and were inspired to continue to support their community. Youth engagement in applied research and health promotion at the local level can provide a foundation for community health improvement efforts that are relevant for distinct communities, while fostering the positive development of youth, and nurturing community-driven efforts to help create a healthier environment.
The article departs from an overarching research question: How does young people's engagement in different Internet spaces affect the development of their public orientation during adolescence? It ...analyses longitudinal panel data in order to explore how young people's public orientation develops during a phase in life (13-20) which is critical for political socialization. Data are derived from three waves of data collection among young people who were 13-17 years old at the time for the first data collection. The concept public orientation is measured by three indicators: young people's values, interests and everyday peer talk. These indicators are analysed with reference to respondents' Internet orientations, which we conceptualize as four separate but inter-related spaces (a news space, a space for social interaction, a game space and a creative space). The results primarily emphasize the importance of orientations towards news space and space for social interaction. Overall, the findings strongly suggest that orientations towards these spaces are related to adolescents' public orientation. The findings confirm the centrality of news and information in political socialization, but they also challenge the idea that social media facilities - such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging - enable forms of social interaction and creative production that have an overall positive impact on young people's public orientation.
Young people with a sibling or parent who experiences mental health challenges have their own support needs. Most programs designed for this population lack a strong evidence base, and the ...involvement of young people in the development and evaluation of programs designed to support them is unclear or lacking.
This paper describes a protocol for a mixed methods, longitudinal, collaborative evaluation of a suite of programs delivered by The Satellite Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation for young people (5-25 years) who have a family member with mental health challenges. Young people's lived experience and knowledge will guide the research approach. Institutional ethics approval has been obtained. Over a three year period, approximately 150 young people will be surveyed online on various wellbeing outcome measures, prior to, six and twelve months following program participation with data analysed using multi-level modelling. Groups of young people will be interviewed after participating in different Satellite programs each year. An additional group of young people will be interviewed individually over time. Transcripts will be analysed using thematic analysis. Young people's creative artworks on their experiences will be included as part of the evaluation data.
This novel, collaborative evaluation will provide vital evidence on young people's experiences and outcomes during their time with Satellite. Findings will be used to inform future program development and policy. The approach used here may guide other researchers engaging in collaborative evaluations with community organisations.
PDF
