Engaging Youth and Young Adults in the COVID-19 Pandemic Response via the "It's Our Turn" Crowdsourcing Contest

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continued to progress into 2021, appeals were made to take a stronger focus on the perceptions and practices of youth and young adults (YYAs) regarding COVID-19 mitigation, as well as the impact of mitigation strategies on the overall wellbeing of YYAs....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2023-03, Vol.20 (6), p.5112
Main Authors: Evans, Linnea A, Gomez, Omar, Jiménez, Dulce J, Williamson, Heather J, Carver, Ann Turnlund, Parthasarathy, Sairam, Sabo, Samantha
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adults
Advisors
Age groups
Analysis
Arizona
Collaboration
Communication
Community health care
Contests
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 vaccines
Crowdsourcing
Disease transmission
Epidemics
Health Services Research - methods
Humans
Medical research
Mental health
Pandemics
Participatory research
Power-sharing
Social change
Social networks
Social organization
Teenagers
Young Adult
Young adults
Youth
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Summary:As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continued to progress into 2021, appeals were made to take a stronger focus on the perceptions and practices of youth and young adults (YYAs) regarding COVID-19 mitigation, as well as the impact of mitigation strategies on the overall wellbeing of YYAs. In this paper, we describe our efforts to increase YYA engagement in Arizona's COVID-19 response by pairing embedded values from youth participatory action research (YPAR) with a crowdsourcing challenge contest design. The research protocol and implementation are described, followed by a thematic analysis of YYA-led messaging portrayed in 23 contest submissions and reflections formed by 223 community voters after viewing contest submissions. The authors conclude that a YYA-led crowdsourcing contest presented an opportunity to (a.) investigate the perceptions and behaviors of YYAs and their networks regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigation efforts (b.) amplify the voices of YYAs in the pandemic response. Perhaps even more importantly, this approach also offered insight into the exacerbated impact of the pandemic on YYA mental health and wellbeing, and the utility of YPAR in raising awareness of these effects among the contexts and social networks of YYAs.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph20065112