Penn State PRO Wellness, with support from Penn State Clinical and Translational Institute (CTSI), is organizing a network of teens called the Adolescent Health Network (AHN), who are trained as stakeholders and could give health researchers feedback as they build and develop their studies.
Researchers can ask high school students from grades 9-12 to provide feedback on such topics as: recruitment strategies, phrasing used in surveys, tasks study participants will be asked to complete and plans to share study results with teenagers at the conclusion of a project. The student participants are not research subjects but are providing stakeholder input and expertise on research directly relevant to them.
"At PRO Wellness, we have a long history of working with schools to provide health and wellness programming," said Deepa Sekhar, director of Penn State PRO Wellness and co-lead of Penn State CTSI's Community-engaged Research Core. "The creation of the adolescent health network is a natural evolution of our work in schools, with a two-fold purpose: improving the quality of adolescent research and sparking interest in science and biomedical research among teens."
The network was launched in spring 2022, with funding through the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute's (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards. The network is actively recruiting schools and students. However, the program currently partners with adolescents from over 10 schools in central Pennsylvania. The AHN is actively booking sessions for spring and fall 2024. All sessions are held virtually, via one-hour Zoom meetings.
How it works
PRO Wellness is currently accepting inquiries from researchers who feel their research project could benefit from a session with the AHN; sessions may be scheduled in spring or fall 2024.
Once a research project has been accepted for an AHN, the PRO Wellness staff will manage the logistics of scheduling, communicate with the network members, guide the researcher on their preparation and set up for the zoom meeting and assist with technology resources during the session. Materials may be circulated to the students prior to the session, to help facilitate discussion.
At the end of the session, PRO Wellness asks that the researcher talk about their career, education and training for the last 10 minutes, to help educate students on a variety of careers in fields related to health research.
