Communities Invested in Healthy Life Trajectories of African American Boys

Introduction: This presentation highlights formative research and aims of a 5-year community-based participatory research (CBPR) project in two regions of the United States (St. Paul, MN; Birmingham, AL). The CBPR project, funded as part of the National Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center (NTCC) for African American Men’s Health, involves building community coalitions that will review, select, refine, implement and evaluate a school-linked intervention for African American, socioeconomically disadvantaged boys aged 8-14 years and their caregivers. Goals include utilizing family and community assets to prevent or reduce boys’ externalizing symptoms, risk behavior, receipt of school-based disciplinary action, and juvenile justice involvement. Project activities will be accomplished through the step-by-step coalition-based prevention approach, Communities that Care (Hawkins, Catalano, et al., 2008).

Methods: Formative work in St. Paul was conducted in two stages: (1) Two focus groups of African American children aged 8-12 years (n=14) and two focus groups of caregivers (n=16) were held to discuss the most important issues affecting the well-being and future success of young people in the African American community; (2) Structured interviews were conducted with 46 African American children (54% boys) aged 8-12 years and their caregivers.

Results: Formative research suggests that relationships between children, caregivers and teachers must be strengthened in order to foster youth assets and provide resources for resilience. Among boys, but not girls, a quarter of the variance in standardized test scores in reading (r=.50 vs. r=.06) and math (r=.55 vs. r=-.01) was explained by behavioral coping (e.g., I think about the choices before I do anything). Behavioral coping was utilized most frequently by children who reported high levels of instrumental support from caregivers and whose caregivers reported high utilization of behavioral coping themselves. Among African American boys, reports of fewer witnessed violent events and negative behavioral events (e.g., I got into trouble at school; I had a lot of arguments with my parent) were associated with greater academic investment (r=-.60 and r=-.65, respectively) and perceived teacher support, including investment in the child’s education and positive regard for the child (r’s between -.40 and -.50). During focus groups, caregivers described challenges to teacher-child and teacher-parent relationships, including dissatisfaction with teachers’ labeling of and responses to children’s classroom behavior.

Conclusions: During Year 1 of the CBPR project, formative research is being disseminated in St. Paul and conducted/disseminated in Birmingham to identify and engage coalition partners. Successful completion of project aims will (1) improve capacity and resources available to promote positive outcomes among youth living in socioeconomically disadvantaged regions; and (2) establish the feasibility and acceptability of utilizing a CBPR approach. The NTCC will disseminate generalizable knowledge (e.g., strategies to identify and engage stakeholders) to facilitate implementation and evaluation of similar community-led prevention and intervention programs.