Description of Community Partner
Founded in 1968, the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) has served thousands of members of the D.C community and its surrounding areas. Through equitable and comprehensive community-based projects, they focus on supporting youth through adulthood across various programs centered on academics, arts and recreation, job readiness, health and wellness, and safe housing. Our partner focuses on enhancing multiculturalism in their work, and they have grown from a small grassroots organization into a full-scale center. Our partners, Nola and Gian-Pablo, are a part of the LAYC Prevention Center for Wards 1 & 2, and they aim to prevent substance use disorders (SUDs) through education and awareness. Populations served by LAYC include, but are not limited to, youth from ages 11-24 of all backgrounds such as low-income youth, youth experiencing homelessness, and youth in foster care or juvenile justice systems.
A few programs are specific to the LAYC Prevention Center, including the Youth Prevention Leadership Corps (YPLC), DC Opioid Response (DCOR), Spanish-Speaking Parents/Caregivers Network, and the Community Prevention Network (CPN). Their work is supported by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Strategic Prevention Framework, and they also function as a Naloxone distribution center. Both Nola and Gian-Pablo were interested in updating their YPLC course curriculum and each topic presentation for their students.
Project Description
Our project was centered around the LAYC Substance Use Disorders Teaching Manual inclusive of background information for instructors, lesson plans with embedded activities, and a uniform set of PowerPoints for each of 10 course topics. All background one-pagers discuss history of the topic, its relevance to youth and SUDs, as well as any D.C. specific data that is relevant to the discussion. Additional instructor and student resources can be found at the end of each one-pager along with references formatted as AMA footnotes.
Each lesson plan would include tailored learning objectives, details for executing various activities, and additional discussion questions for students. Instructors were advised to read through each digital lesson plan prior to teaching and make use of hyperlinked activities and presentations within the manual. Certain helpful resources and the Wards 1 & 2 Resource Map were included at the end of the manual.
Lastly, members of our team were responsible for hosting a field trip for members of the LAYC youth cohort. The field trip consisted of a career services presentation on careers in public health and applying to colleges, a student Q&A panel, and lastly a tour of Milken’s exercise science and anatomy facilities. Students were then provided with a reflective writing assignment to be completed within one week of the field trip.
Teamwork
My two person SUD team consisted of Victoria and I. From our self-assessments, we determined from the very start that we have very similar communication skills and project management styles. Throughout the semester, we held each other accountable with deadlines, and we grew to be a very well-balanced team. Following the team building activity with different members in the class, I can say that I felt somewhat uneasy about the prospect of a semester-long assignment with real partners within our community. I thought that if I did not work well with my teammate, it would be extremely difficult to meet the expectations of the course and the needs of our community partner.However, Victoria and I worked incredibly well together. I think that my teammate and I have done well with our interpersonal communications and execution of tasks, so we did not meet any “hope” or “effort” creeps throughout our project’s completion. We maintained open lines of communication through text, facetime, and in person meetings, and we were always keeping one another on track when it came to other class assignments as well.
While we did very well working together, we experienced some difficulties when it came to communicating with our partner. We unfortunately did not have our first nor our subsequent meetings in person, so it was hard to initially develop a sense of our partner and their motivations for participating in this project. Our communications at times felt one-sided, where we would reach out to our partner via email and not necessarily receive a timely response. While we were cognizant of the leadership changes of LAYC, both Victoria and I hoped to establish a stronger relationship with our partner. Some of our biggest challenges occurred when working with the entire SUD group, as we had already developed consistent expectations within our individual team. Assigning roles in our larger group proved to be a difficulty, as only some members were willing to commit to an equitable amount of work for our field trip and presentation development. In the end, I think that Victoria and I navigated these obstacles as best we could, and we grew very proud of the content we developed. While we won't be delivering the content ourselves, we were happy to hear that we exceeded the expectations of our community partner, and that they are eager to employ the use of our manual in the future.
Project Management
In reflecting on the progression of our course, I was not expecting to have gained so much information and experience with project management. Our projects truly felt like the culmination of our undergraduate public health experience, and I learned a lot about my personal style and how to engage in good practices for completing a project. In my previous studies and work experiences, I feel like I have only had some exposure to large-scale project management, so I was quite unfamiliar with some aspects of this framework. I think that the most beneficial portion from learning about project management came from Cobb (2023), who stated that project management techniques are not competing with each other, but rather, “complementary in nature” (p. 19). Understanding that a one-size-fits-all approach is not the best for every project, but rather a variety of different strategies to help to create an all-encompassing project was highly important.
I found our project management style to function well with a hybrid format, as some decisions were made as new information from our reviewers, experts, or community partners became available. On the other hand, both Victoria and I had our own internal planning done far in advance to keep us on track for the entire semester. Throughout the project development and execution, we would employ various techniques of the Agile and Waterfall frameworks that best suited us. I found that the project management readings were particularly the most helpful for this course, as we were already familiar with many of the public health topics, but project management may not have necessarily been as commonplace within our undergraduate studies. In hindsight, a tailored tool for project management may have provided additional benefits to my partner and I; however, I do not believe that it would have made much of a difference in the long-run. I do believe that some sort of sheet for assigning roles for our final presentation would have been a useful tool to ensure equitable work was allocated to each member.
We chose to utilize the original project management worksheet, as we found it to be well structured for our project. Given that many of our deliverables were the same throughout the project and differed on the basis of course topics, we were able to easily formulate the sheet to our weekly deadlines. The deliverables were separated into: Background & Lesson Plan, PowerPoint, and Field Trip Items.
I have included my first and final versions of my community partner sheets to illustrate the progression of information my team gained over the course of a few meetings with our partners. In the beginning, some sections had to be left blank given that we had only so much information available from the other community partners of the LAYC. However, you can visualize how influential our community partner meetings were as we gained a breadth of information that we previously did not know.
Project Highlights
Activities & Resources Encompassing the Themes of Our Course
Black Lungs / Black Lives: The Journey of a Stolen Leaf
How Marijuana Affects Your Developing Brain
Combatting the Opioid Crisis: Department of Education
Activity Showcase
Revisiting Hopes & Fears
Within my original Hopes and Fears, I wrote, “I truly hope to create a meaningful connection with my community partner and be able to witness some of the benefits that my work will have on the youth served by the LAYC substance abuse program.” Working as a clinician has made me experience the effects of substance use disorders on our community, and I wanted to be able to contribute to change within the populations I interact with in DC. While we did not create as well-knit a connection with our community partners as I had previously hoped, I am still very proud of the work that we created throughout the semester. In my Hopes and Fears, I noted, “I will attempt to enter my partnership with an open mind and flexibility moving through the semester.” I made sure to maintain this attitude throughout the progression of the project, even when faced with obstacles, and I believe that it was incredibly necessary to stay positive throughout developing our content.
When looking back on the experience, I think that while my hopes would have remained relatively the same, my fears would have been more focused on the responsiveness of our community partner. I think that more frequent and open lines of communication between our team and our partner may have served to enhance our project further. My hopes to foster social change and the ability to see my work in action still holds true today. I think that the experience has motivated me to pursue community work as I continue on in my clinical career.
I think that this project has the potential to foster positive social change within the community of DC youth, and we strove to make content evidence-based, interactive, and relevant for all of our students. I believe that changing the dominant narrative involves a host of different stakeholders which may not necessarily take place through our projects alone. However, in using equitable language and acknowledging the effects of certain discriminatory legislation and practices surrounding SUD use, we can take a step in the right direction for changing the dominant narrative. I think that project serves as a critical service learning project as it directly involves our community, is accompanied by multiple reflective periods, and attempts to create social change. Throughout our readings, we have focused heavily on these concepts, and I think that each project and group has achieved the various goals of critical service delivery in a variety of ways.
Undoubtedly, this course changed how I view myself and my work as a professional, which was not something that I necessarily expected when first signing up for the course. I think that applying the concepts of advocacy, health education, service learning, and others that we have focused on in depth throughout undergraduate coursework has made this project a significant milestone in my public health work. As I move on into my career and further studies, I am grateful for this experience and I am excited to see how I can utilize the themes of this course in the future.