#MYHealth: Training the Next Generation of Health Scientists Through Participatory Research in Adolescent Health

Biomedical research serves as the backbone for medical innovation and progress. Despite decades of calls for strengthening the biomedical research workforce, trainees continue to drop out of the field at alarming rates. High school is a critically important time to catalyze interest and rebuild engagement among youth who may have previously felt left out from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. However, previous programs have primarily focused on trainees at the undergraduate level or higher. As such, there is a critical need to develop programs that strengthen the path of high school students toward health research careers. The overall objective of this proposal is to engage high school students in Southeastern Michigan in a research training program that engages and focuses on adolescents. Through the Michigan Youth Health (MYHealth) program, we will train high school students to be co-researchers who work alongside academic researchers, which will help them to envision themselves as scientists capable of positively impacting issues they care about. Our three specific aims are: 1) To promote high school students’ interest and ability to see themselves in STEM research careers through a mentored summer research experience in adolescent health research. 2) To develop youths’ sense of research compatibility, research and science self-efficacy, and scientific literacy by engaging students as co-researchers in “Impact Projects” targeting academic, policy, school, neighborhood, and youth audiences. 3) To increase students’ leadership and teamwork self-efficacy, research skills, and science persistence by engaging them as “Peer Leaders” in summer and academic-year research programs. We will accomplish these aims by engaging a new cohort of high school students during each year of the five-year award period. Participants will complete up to three program components that become progressively more focused and advanced. First, all participating students will complete a 10-day “Summer Launch” to introduce them to health services research methodologies. Second, a subset of these students (selected based upon emerging interest in research) will participate in 9-month virtual “Impact Projects” through which they will conduct their own research on adolescent health topics and disseminate findings to a variety of audiences. Third, in Years 2-5 an additional subset of students (based on emerging research interest) will receive further training and mentorship through “Peer Leader” opportunities in their second year of participation. The proposed MYHealth program will target core drivers of science persistence: interest in STEM research careers; sense of research compatibility; self-efficacy in science, leadership, and teamwork; and scientific literacy. Students will directly collaborate with and be mentored by MYHealth faculty that includes investigators, local and scientific advisors, and youth peers with a range of expertise and experiences. If this project is successful, the MYHealth program could ultimately have a significant and widespread impact on the current crisis of persistence in the research workforce.