Bianca Barraza
Pronouns: She/Her
Research Mentor(s): Melissa Dejonckheere
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Department of Family Medicine / Medicine
Program: UROP
Session: Session 5 (2:40pm – 3:30pm)
Authors: Bianca Barraza, Sam Chuisano, Melissa DeJonckheere
Abstract
Currently, there is a demand for diversifying the workforce to help with innovation, opinions, and filling the gaps of need in marginalized communities. Youth being the future of the workforce, it’s essential to focus on developing a more diverse and inclusive program allowing the youth coming from marginalized communities to develop interest and confidence in pursuing careers in research and STEM. Previous research found interest in science is influenced mostly by social and environmental factors making marginalized youth susceptible to barriers like family factors, extracurricular activities, science clubs, pedagogical factors, and social factors affecting youth confidence in success in STEM. Despite high schools’ science curriculum, high school students still lack opportunities to develop interest and skills in STEM and research. MYHealth is an innovative youth-centered research training program with a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach in partnership with high school students as co-researchers. In each phase of the program, students will build knowledge and skills in research, ethics, data collection, data analysis, and dissemination. To keep progress on participants’ learning and opinions, a survey is sent out pre, mid, and post of the research cycle to better understand their attitudes and beliefs about STEM and research. MYHealth results are expected to help youth, focusing on underrepresented high school students, build persistence towards health research careers by developing researcher identities, science literacy, science self-efficacy, teamwork, and leadership self-efficacy through working on their own research. Efforts to help youth build confidence and interest in pursuing STEM, research, and health-related careers give hope to better our future through improving inclusion and finding new and complex answers we wouldn’t find otherwise.
