Schedule:
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Pacific D/L (Hyatt Regency San Francisco)
* noted as presenting author
Allison Ingalls, MPH, Research Associate, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Lauren Tingey, MPH, MSW, Research Associate, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Francene Larzelere-Hinton, BA, Senior Research Program Coordinator, The Johns Hopkins University, Whiteriver, AZ
Feather Sprengeler, BA, Research Assistant, The Johns Hopkins University, Whiteriver, AZ
Todd Craft, AA, Research Assistant, The Johns Hopkins University, Whiteriver, AZ
Courtney McGuire, MPH, Senior Research Program Coordinator, The Johns Hopkins University, Whiteriver, AZ
Vanya Szabo, MS, Senior Research Program Coordinator, The Johns Hopkins University, Whiteriver, AZ
Allison Barlow, PhD, Assistant Scientist, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Introduction: American Indian (AI) adolescents suffer the largest disparities in substance use and suicide. Researchers urge for strengths-based approaches that examine societal-level factors such as poverty and unemployment and that are committed to local capacity building and community health, with an over-arching emphasis on resilience. Entrepreneurship education is a positive youth development approach with promise to fill this gap. Entrepreneurship education can promote protective factors identified as meaningful to AI adolescent substance use and suicide prevention (connectedness, hope, mastery, and self-control) on individual, peer and community levels. The White Mountain Apache Tribe, in partnership with the Johns Hopkin Center for American Indian Health, have developed an entrepreneurship education program with a goal to teach entrepreneurship education blended with life-skills, and promote school connectedness (commitment to school, attachment to pro-social peers, belief in schools norms about positive behavior), while fostering supportive relationships with positive peers and caring adults.
Study Design: The Arrowhead Business Group Apache Youth Entrepreneurship Program (ABG) is a 16-session curriculum taught via discussion, games, hands-on learning, and multimedia. ABG focuses on entrepreneurship and business development, life skills self-efficacy, and finance. Each lesson is delivered by two adult facilitators to mixed-gender groups of youth ages 13-16. Lessons incorporate presentations by Apache entrepreneurs and community business leaders as well as Elders, who reinforce aspects of Apache culture, that promote entrepreneurship and connectedness to positive Apache identity. The first 10 lessons are taught during a 5-day residential summer camp; the last 6 lessons are taught during monthly after-school workshops throughout the academic year.
ABG is currently being evaluated through a 2:1 randomized controlled trial. Approximately 600 youth (400 intervention, 200 in control), are recruited annually in three cohorts using non-probability sampling. The ABG intervention will be evaluated for its impact on psychosocial, behavioral health, educational and economic outcomes from baseline up to 24-months post-intervention.
Conclusion: Entrepreneurship education is a promising model of positive youth development for American Indian communities that can promote life skills, high school completion and college matriculation, and foster adolescent connectedness to school, community and cultural identity. Evaluation of such a program is a highly innovative approach to suicide and substance use prevention with potential for replication in other indigenous and similarly stressed communities.
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