Latino youth participation in community-based participatory research to reduce teen pregnancy disparities

Background: Community-based participatory research can provide a framework to build community capacity to do health equity research, particularly from community members who may not typically participate in research design and intervention. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe a community-based coalition's partnership and engagement with Latino youth throughout the research process addressing health disparities in unintended teen pregnancy rates in a local community. Israel and colleagues' components of CBPR provide a framework to develop youth participation throughout the research process. Method: High school and college Latino youth participated in health equity research from community assessments to design an intervention and dissemination of results. Results: Working with youth can improve the integrity and validity of the research process and can also provide benefits to the community and individual youth members, resulting in increased community capacity for health equity research. Discussion: Lessons learned about the direct and indirect benefits and challenges are presented. Community-based partnerships working with youth should consider documenting the individual and collective impact of community engagement on the youth from the onset of participation.