Pitt Pediatrics congratulates Alison Culyba, MD, PhD, MPH, for her R01 grant from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The award was for her project Forging Hopeful Futures: A Racial and Gender-Justice Program to Reduce Youth Violence.
Youth violence is pervasive and negatively impacts physical and mental health and community wellbeing. Racially and ethnically diverse youth, sexual and gender minority youth, youth with multiple intersecting marginalized identities, and youth residing in neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage disproportionately bear the burden of violence. Chronic, repeated exposure to early trauma and adversity, including violence, racism, and oppression, can result in toxic stress responses that impede children’s healthy development and increase the likelihood of both violence victimization and perpetration. Few community-driven approaches to violence in the US also seek to intervene on gender socialization and unequal power dynamics.
The youth empowerment intervention to be refined and evaluated, Forging Hopeful Futures, will combine economic justice content from job readiness training, racial and gender justice content from gender-transformative programming, and leadership building as a novel multi-level violence prevention intervention. Near program conclusion, youth will be connected with employment opportunities and encouraged to continue participation in social change efforts, with scaffolding offered through community organizations and mentors in each neighborhood. Culyba and team will examine mechanisms through which the intervention creates impact and how pre-intervention risk and protective factors moderate intervention effects on multiple forms of violence.