Supporting Social Connections and Social Infrastructure to Address Youth Violence

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In response to NOT-OD-22-057: Administrative Supplement to Recognize Excellence in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Mentorship for PA-20-272 this proposal will 1) enhance K23HD098277 data collection, 2) enrich Dr. Culyba’s mentorship skills to train interdisciplinary scholars committed to addressing the impact of racism on adolescent health, and 3) support career development of graduate students and post- doctoral scholars underrepresented in the health sciences in adolescent health equity research. Violence prevention research focused on individual risk factors fails to capture the complex ways in which experiences of racism and discrimination and constrained access to resources and opportunities including those made available through healthy social networks and safe places help to shape violence involvement. Interpersonal and community-level factors offer opportunities to move beyond individual risk-based approaches to address systemic inequities and to reduce the disproportionate burden of violence borne by minoritized youth. The overall goal of the parent award from which this proposal emerges is to apply social network analysis techniques to elucidate the structure and quality of adolescents’ adult support networks across family, school, and community contexts that confer protection from violence in low-resource urban neighborhoods and to design and test a network-based violence prevention intervention. This administrative supplement will enrich the descriptive work in K23 Aim 1 by coupling a multimodal social network analysis approach with photovoice and walking interviews. Supplemental Aim 1 will characterize youth’s social networks and social infrastructure touchpoints and illuminate how youth’s interactions with people and social spaces may collectively buffer experiences of racism and discrimination and impact multiple forms of violence involvement. Findings will enhance development of a stakeholder-engaged community-based social network intervention designed to strengthen and expand adolescent-adult support networks (K23 Aims 2 and 3). Culyba will pursue advanced mentorship training supported by this administrative supplement to enrich her K23 career development objective 3: enhance team leadership skills to support transition to independent investigator. Building upon her strong track record of mentoring trainees in adolescent health, violence prevention, and social network research, Culyba will mentor graduate students and post-doctoral scholars committed to careers focused on adolescent health equity research to carry out Supplemental Aim 1. This will include mentorship in the proposed social network and qualitative methods, opportunities for trainees to expand mentorship in academic- community partnerships, and experiential training to support mentees underrepresented in the health sciences to pursue biomedical research careers. Completion of research and training objectives will support Culyba’s transition to independent physician-scientist and youth violence prevention researcher who leads a diverse team to develop, test, and scale novel interventions to reduce violence inequities.