WiP Seminar: “We are our own experts”: Co-designing participatory research with youth to improve sexual health care access

Sarah Munro, PhD, MA, BA (Hons)
Program Head, Knowledge Translation, Advancing Health
Assistant Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UBC
Affiliate Member, Women’s Health Research Institute

“We are our own experts”: Co-designing participatory research with youth to improve sexual health care access

There is little to no evidence in Canada on the barriers that youth face when accessing sexual health care for contraception. In the ‘Ask Us’ project, we sought to identify the contraception access, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and needs of youth in Canada, from the perspectives of youth and youth service providers. To support this work, our team has engaged in knowledge translation with youth in all phases of the project. When youth are involved in co-design of research, it generates approaches that yield better engagement, participation, and relevance for youth who face systemic barriers to health care access. It also leads to more useful, acceptable, and relevant evidence to improve the health and wellbeing of youth.

This presentation will summarize the co-design approach of a prospective, mixed-methods, integrated knowledge mobilization study, Ask Us. It will describe methods for partnering with youth as embedded researchers; summarize a novel relational mapping and outreach approach led by youth; describe how youth were involved in co-leading in-depth interviews with their peers; and present the preliminary results of our collaborative analysis. By following a community-led, equity-focused approach where youth are valued partners and collaborators in our research, we aim to empower youth, bridge knowledge gaps, and co-produce evidence to support equitable accessible high-quality healthcare. 

This is a hybrid event, you may attend in person or virtually. Attendees must register and indicate their preference.