172 - Engaging Youth as Research Partners: Perspectives of Clinical and Translational Science Institute Leadership

Poster Number: 172
Publication Number: 172.94

Background: Although clinical and translational science institutes (CTSIs) have made increasing efforts to incorporate community engagement as a standard practice, to date, these efforts primarily focus on adult rather than adolescent community members. However, engaging youth as research partners can increase research relevance and feasibility, provide direct benefits to youth, and potentially be used as a strategy for increasing scientific workforce diversity.

Objective: To assess perspectives of CTSI leaders on the benefits, challenges, facilitators, and current processes for engaging youth as research partners.

Design/Methods: We recruited CTSI community engagement core leaders to participate in individual semi-structured virtual interviews. Interviews were auto-transcribed by the virtual meeting platform, then reviewed for accuracy. We used a hybrid deductive-inductive thematic analysis approach to code transcripts, then consolidated codes into themes.

Results: We reached data saturation with 19 interviews. Participants represented CTSIs from across the US; see Table 1 for additional demographics. Four themes emerged, with associated subthemes. 1) Engaging youth as research partners has multilevel benefits, including increased research relevance and feasibility, youth opportunity and empowerment, scientific workforce diversity, and informing CTSI operations. 2) Engaging youth as research partners is impeded by multilevel barriers related to institutional infrastructure, lack of funding, generational differences in communication preferences and life stage, and adolescent trust and vulnerability. 3) CTSIs use varied approaches to engage youth in both collaborative research partnerships and educational research exposures. 4) System-level changes in academic institutional culture, infrastructure, and community relationships are needed to enable youth engagement. See Table 2 for illustrative quotations.

Conclusion(s): Although CTSI leaders recognize multilevel benefits of engaging youth as research partners, there are significant barriers to implementing this. Most barriers and facilitators identified by study participants reside at the level of institutions rather than individuals. Thus, institutional solutions are necessary to enable individual researchers to consistently engage youth as partners in the research process.