Sustainability and Social Justice

Sustaining Youth Participation in a Long-Term Tobacco Control Initiative: Consideration of a Social Justice Perspective

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article presents an in-depth case study of the Healthy Options for Prevention and Education Coalition's Teens Tackle Tobacco initiative, a 3-year community-based participatory research (CBPR) project about the distribution of tobacco vendors and tobacco advertising in Worcester, Massachusetts. Using two theoretical frameworks, positive youth development (PYD) and social justice youth development (SJYD), the case reveals personal and community conditions that drove youth to get engaged in this project, how CBPR guided the group's research and action strategy, and results of the work to date. Analysis of this case highlights factors that facilitate and pose barriers to active youth involvement in a long-term, tobacco-related community change initiative. Specifically, to affect oppressive community conditions, a blend of PYD's focus on individual skill building, participation, and empowerment-joined with SJYD emphasis on community organizing and building youth's self-awareness of how race, class, and other dimensions of power affect their lives on a daily basis-is needed.

Publication Title

Youth and Society

Publication Date

6-1-2011

Volume

43

Issue

2

First Page

681

Last Page

704

ISSN

0044-118X

DOI

10.1177/0044118X10366672

Keywords

community-based participatory research, positive youth development, social justice youth development, tobacco control, youth participation

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