The intent of the proposed research is to examine the impact of a community-based comprehensive youth development program on risk behaviors and protective factors among American Indians, age 10-18. The Ginew/Golden Eagle Program, of the Minneapolis American Indian Center, provides all youth participants with an intensive weekly health promotion program combined with meals, access to primary health care services, academic tutoring, and cultural/spiritual programming. Using a resiliency-based theoretical framework, this longitudinal study will examine interrelationships among organizational, familial and individual characteristics which promote protective factors that enhance well-being and buffer against adverse or health-compromising physical, social and psychological outcomes. The use of a panel design with 3 waves of data collection at one year intervals for control (N=250) and an index or program participant groups (N=250) will enable the examination of cohort effects as well as intervention effects on the health and well-being of urban American Indian youths from early to late adolescence. To examine cohort and longitudinal patterns of health and risk behaviors and health status for both index and control groups, we will utilize the Indian Adolescent Health Survey (Blum, Harmon, Harris, Resnick, et al., 1992), a comprehensive health assessment instrument used, to date, with over 14,000 American Indian older children and adolescents. In addition to self-reported health status and risk behavior indicators, this instrument taps into multiple variables in the resiliency paradigm including a variety of protective factors that mitigate against adverse social and psychological outcomes for young people. The second component of the study involves an evaluation of critical characteristics of the youth development program as predictors of positive social-behavioral and psychological outcomes for American Indian youth. An integrative group process involving key American Indian community and program leaders will be utilized to develop a youth self-report instrument that qualitatively taps program characteristics which are theoretically linked to positive outcome indicators among young people. Data will also be derived from existing program records on participants' use of services, in order to monitor intensity and duration of service utilization concurrent with the aforementioned qualitative program assessment. Together, the assessment instrument and service use records will permit an examination of relationships between the intensity of service utilization and youth perceptions' of the quality of services with changes in individual health status, risky behaviors, and protective factors over time. Within the context of a resiliency framework, the findings are expected to guide the future development and dissemination of culturally-sensitive youth-serving programs, while the evaluation process itself is anticipated to provide a model of capacity-building within the host organization for purposes of ongoing evaluation, feedback, program modification, and continuous programmatic self-monitoring.
| Bearinger, Linda H; Pettingell, Sandra L; Resnick, Michael D et al. (2010) Reducing weapon-carrying among urban American Indian young people. J Adolesc Health 47:43-50 |
| Pettingell, Sandra L; Bearinger, Linda H; Skay, Carol L et al. (2008) Protecting urban American Indian young people from suicide. Am J Health Behav 32:465-76 |
| Bearinger, Linda H; Pettingell, Sandra; Resnick, Michael D et al. (2005) Violence perpetration among urban american Indian youth: can protection offset risk? Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 159:270-7 |
