Session: Youth Generated Messages As a Prevention Strategy: The Stories of Three Programs of Research (Society for Prevention Research 26th Annual Meeting)

This panel presents new directions in youth message development as a prevention strategy. The papers focus on projects utilizing youth message development to reduce harmful behaviors and promote health. A variety of theories explain the effectiveness of this strategy including Narrative Engagement Theory, the Theory of Active Involvement, and Health Branding Theory. While calling upon different explanatory mechanisms, each argues that youth generated messages not only influence the message generator but, as well, peers who receive the messages.

The introduction explains two approaches to this strategy, one in which youth-produced messages are part of an intervention (i.e., collaborating with youth to develop interventions) and the second in which the messages, themselves, are the intervention (i.e., creating messages or promotes healthy behavior). Three prevention interventions will be described demonstrating research-practice partnerships that use youth generated messages, each highlighting the theory, practice and effects of this strategy.

By developing evidence-based research and practices that partner with the end-user, the projects demonstrate how to close the gap among local, state, national, and international partnerships through collaboration to insure engagement in long-term prevention science-practice. For example, the Youth Message Design project evolved into two online interventions, one of which, REAL media, is being used by 4-H clubs in 4 states with potential for expansion nationally, and the other, REAL messages, is being disseminated in high schools by D.A.R.E. By embedding our research into the practices of the end-user, these projects demonstrate an emerging approach to dissemination and research-practice partnerships in which the basic research, development, implementation and dissemination is merged into a single process.