2016 UAA Annual Conference

This session will focus on using a community-based research approach as a method for better understanding new public health concerns and other public policy challenges. The Urban Institute and University of California San Diego will describe their joint efforts in defining a new public health concept – coercive sexual environments (CSE) – and designing and testing an intervention in response. Dr. Sue Popkin will provide insights on how she better defined the problem using both quantitative and qualitative information from various research projects, and then developed a new validated scale to measure community levels of CSE. Dr. Jay Silverman will review the public health implications of exposure to CSE for adolescent girls, including vulnerability to a range of forms of gender-based violence (partner violence, sexual assault, sexual exploitation), adolescent pregnancy, and HIV. He will also discussed the limitations of school-based programming and the need for ‘place-based’ initiatives to address such these issues, using Promoting Adolescent Sexual Health and Safety (PASS) that includes complementary interventions for adolescent boys, girls and their adult care givers as an example. Elsa Falkenburger will share lessons learned from several of the community-based research methods used as part of the PASS project –building trust, sharing and interpreting data collaboratively with the community, and training community members to implement the intervention to improve service delivery and sustainability. The moderator will engage any willing colloquy participants to share their questions, experiences, and suggestions throughout the session.