Connecting Community Through Conversation

James Sherpa: Coming up on BroncoTales. 

Kaydin Griffin: When we do our yearly surveys, it’s really interesting to see the differences in the data of each school community. We survey on a wide array of things, such as school safety, having a trusted adult, substance use, community factors, and more individual factors as well. It’s really interesting to see how different each community is from each other. 

Hailey Stewart: Hello, and welcome to BroncoTales with the College of Health Sciences. My name is Hailey Stewart, and I’m the Communication Specialist for the School of Public and Population Health.

In this episode, we’re focusing on the Communities for Youth organization and the Boise State students behind its success. Today, I’m joined by two of those students from the School of Public and Population Health, Kaydin Griffin and Libbie Luevanos. 

Kaydin Griffin: Thank you so much for having us, Hailey. My name is Kaydin Griffin. I am a current Master of Public Health student. I’m emphasizing in prevention and intervention programming. I’m also getting my certificate in data-driven decision-making making.

I am a current graduate research assistant for Communities for Youth, which is an organization utilizing upstream prevention methods and combining community strengths to foster positive youth well-being outcomes all across Idaho. 

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah, my name is Libbie Luevanos. I am also a prevention and intervention Emphasis Master’s of Public Health student. I, unlike Kaydin, am in my first year. I’m also a Research Assistant with Communities for Youth. I’m very excited to be here.

Hailey Stewart: Great. Thank you guys for joining me. So, to get us started, what is the Communities for Youth organization all about? 

Libbie Luevanos: I think at its core, it engages communities to build capacity within them to help them be the best they can be for young people. One of the things that they really like to focus on, or that we really like to focus on, is that it’s not a prescriptive program. We don’t go in and tell people what to do. We understand that each community is different. So, through the help of surveys, we gather data. We have community meetings to share that data, to have the community lead in whatever they want to tackle. I don’t know if you would like to speak more about it? 

Kaydin Griffin: Yeah, no. I think that one of the most wonderful things about our organization is that we’re really based in the community setting instead of the individual setting.

When we go into communities, we don’t just, like Libbie said, we don’t go in there and start telling them what we think that they should do. We do a very long iterative cycle, constantly changing. And we work alongside them. So, we present their data to them, their own actual data about their young people in their community. And then we ask them where they want to go from there. 

So, if they want to highlight some bright spots in their community or some potential areas of opportunity, we will be right there alongside them throughout the process, however they need. But they’re really in control, and we’re just there for support. 

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah, and our overall goal is to really support them and slowly hand them more of the rails. So that in the future, they are able to do this work by themselves. 

Hailey Stewart: Great, great. It sounds like a great organization. So, what prompted you to join Communities for Youth? 

Kaydin Griffin: Yeah, when I was an undergrad, I took research methods with Dr. Megan Smith, who’s the director of Communities for Youth. When I applied for the public health master’s program, one of my friends mentioned that Megan had a graduate assistant position open, working alongside Communities for Youth. And, I set up a meeting with her.

She told me what our organization was about, and I immediately became really interested and wanted to be a part of it. Because I’ve grown up in Boise, the work we do in Idaho is really important to me, and mental health struggles are something that’s close to my heart and those around me. So I wanted to learn more about what communities could do to combat this big, prevalent topic, and I am more interested in working in a community setting. 

I was also really interested in learning how to perform data analysis, which is something that Megan very much supported me in doing. She helped me really understand how to do it, and it kind of sparked my love for it even more. Something I also really appreciate is that she’ll gently push me to do more things and learn more skill sets, so that I can have a broader array of them. I know that I’m never not supported. Everyone on our team is very supportive of whatever you want to take on. 

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah, so I did my undergrad here at Boise State, and it was a STEM major. It was biochemistry. And one of the main reasons why I was so apprehensive to go into grad school is because I felt like I was being kind of driven away from my community and more emphasized in the laboratory work.

So, coming into my master’s in public health, I really wanted something that would allow me to connect with the community. Community engagement is one of my passions. So Communities for Youth, when the opportunity came up, it checked all the right boxes. And one of the main things that really drove me to it is the fact that they listen to communities. 

Sometimes, it’s really hard as an academic to go into communities because they feel like they’re just gonna come get my data and publish a paper. But with Communities for Youth, it wasn’t about the procedure or the paper. It was truly about embracing the Idaho way of taking care of your neighbor, and just truly saying, we’re here to help you. 

Hailey Stewart: Great, so I think those who look up Communities for Youth’s website or those who maybe go to the community meetings, they’ll hear a lot or see a lot about the upstream prevention model that you work with. Can you tell me a bit about that? 

Kaydin Griffin: Absolutely. So, when we say upstream prevention, we’re talking about moving upstream to identify risk and protective factors that lead to poor mental health outcomes in our youth, as opposed to purely relying on crisis intervention.

I always compare the concept of upstream prevention to a river. I’m sure that those who have listened to this podcast before have maybe heard a little bit about upstream prevention and comparing it to the Boise River. So with this analogy, you can imagine that kids are falling into the river, and they’re needing immediate crisis help. And what do we typically do? We get them out of the river as fast as we can. 

But what if instead of purely relying on crisis intervention to get these kids out of the river, we instead look upstream to see why they’re falling in the river in the first place? Are they being pushed? Is there a bridge that’s helping them get across the river? And by doing this, we can prevent kids from getting into the crisis in the first place. 

We look at those risk and protective factors. So, risk factors are those that harm or contribute to poor mental health outcomes. So, for example, not having a supportive family, feeling isolated, and having low feelings of mattering. Those kinds of things are all risk protective factors. And we also looked at protective factors, being those that protect and foster good mental health outcomes. So, for example, having a trusted adult or having a sense of community and feeling a high sense of mattering. Those are all protective factors. 

And when we identify those risk and protective factors in a community, we work alongside them to support how they choose to tackle those factors. And the same goes for when we identify those really good protective factors in a community. We help them celebrate and maintain them. 

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah, and I think it’s oftentimes when you ask a parent or someone in the community about mental health and youth well-being, they will immediately go to a crisis prevention or a mental health care provider. And what we’re trying to do with upstream prevention is say, yes, that is an option; however, let’s see what other places we can also help.

And it really does help bring in the community. One of the things we’ve been pushing is saying, well, maybe you can have a game night and engage those protective factors of having a trusted adult in a child’s life. 

Hailey Stewart: Great, really trying to get ahead of potential issues instead of just working on the issues when they get there. 

Kaydin Griffin: Absolutely. And I might add a little bit more on what Libbie was saying. We like to say that the scope of the solution has to match the scope of the problem. And by saying this, often when we ask communities what they need to better mental health outcomes, it’s always identified that there is a shortage of mental health professionals, which is true in every county in Idaho. And they are so needed and valued.

But it can’t be the only solution because there is a shortage of those professionals. For something as large as the scope of mental health in our youth, the scope of the solution has to match it. And that’s another reason why we prioritize identifying those risks and protective factors, so that we can work alongside those communities and see what other solutions there are. 

Hailey Stewart: Great. So, I can imagine in these community meetings, you have to tackle some probably pretty tough conversations about mental health occasionally, maybe even all the time, with people you may have never even interacted with before. I assume these are a lot of the time just people you just met.

So, what are the challenges that come with that? 

Libbie Luevanos: I think the main challenge is finding a way to truly honor that person’s lived experience and what’s causing them to share all of this with us. And also continuing our work, oftentimes when people hear about mental health struggles, they go to a negative perspective or…they have like a negative point of view on it, being like, it’s sad, and yeah, I’ve also struggled. 

We want to validate those feelings, but also in our community meeting, say, like, together we can come and solve this issue as a community. We can come together and…try to validate their feelings, but also keep track of the work we need to do. 

Kaydin Griffin: Absolutely. Although there are some tough conversations that we definitely do have, there are some individuals who may be hesitant about the work we do or how we conduct our work. Those conversations are some of the most rewarding conversations, in my opinion.

In one of our community engagement classes, we did some modules on how to navigate exactly these difficult conversations with people who have differing opinions from you. In the mental health space, we can all agree on one thing, and that’s we want our youth to thrive. 

We may have different opinions on how to get there, but we all have a shared end goal. And those conversations with those opposing voices are so incredibly important, and sometimes they can be tough to navigate. But those voices are absolutely needed at the table, and we welcome them with open arms. 

Hailey Stewart: Yeah, for sure. So, I think when people think about student research or co-curricular activities that students have in addition to their classes at Boise State, they’ll probably think of lab research or maybe working by themselves. But the two of you are really engaging a lot with big community groups and out in different communities all the time.

So, what are some key things you’ve learned about engaging in that way, and sort of that being your research, the way you do that? 

Libbie Luevanos: I think the main thing I’ve learned is that each community is different, yet we all have the same end goal. So, one of the big skills, I think we’ve both learned, is how to navigate different atmospheres within the different communities. And also that each community has its own bright spots and its places where there’s more opportunity. 

Kaydin Griffin: Absolutely, that’s exactly what I was going to say. That’s something I didn’t expect to see was how different individual communities are from each other, even those that are locationally right next to each other. They could have completely different needs, areas of opportunity, and bright spots. 

When we do our yearly surveys, it’s really interesting to see the differences in the data of each school community. We survey on a wide array of things, such as school safety, having a trusted adult, substance use, community factors, and more individual factors as well. It’s really interesting to see how different each community is from each other.

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah, I think also the same way someone who might be doing bench research sees what they’re learning in their classes play out in their experiments. I think we also see that with our own classes and the community work that we do. 

Kaydin Griffin: Yeah, I think our research is a little bit different from what you typically hear, as you mentioned, Hailey, because we’re in a community engagement setting. We’re right there alongside the community instead of being in a lab or just doing data all day. We work alongside them, which is something that I definitely didn’t know of when I entered the program and something that I absolutely want to continue to do. 

Libbie Luevanos: It definitely sets you up to deal with different challenges because it’s less of a controlled environment. But also, you create lifelong relationships. And you do get closer with the communities that you work with, even if I grew up in the north end my whole life. But now that I’m part of this work, I have a lot of connections to Marsing. And it’s something I would have never had if I hadn’t done this type of research. 

Hailey Stewart: Yeah, very cool. So, how has working with Communities for Youth changed your outlook on public health’s role in mental health? 

Kaydin Griffin: For me, there are two things that come to mind. And the first is that there’s so much value in community efforts. That also goes back to having those tough conversations and needing those people at the table. We truly need every single viewpoint because it’s the community. The community knows itself the best. And all of their values and opinions are needed at the table in the space that we work in.

The second thing that comes to mind is that mental health work seems like a daunting task to take on. But seeing the incredible work that our communities have been able to accomplish since Communities for Youth began has been an incredibly eye-opening experience. In one of the communities that we work in, we saw that their moderate to severe depressive symptoms rates went from 66% of their students struggling with moderate to severe depressive symptoms to 24% of them in just two years. 

That’s a direct reflection of how, one, a passionate community can do incredible things together through engaging with each other and coming together for a common goal. And two, the task of improving mental health is one that can be changed, and it can be improved. It seems like an uphill battle sometimes, but it is absolutely something that can be transformed. 

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah, I think mine is along the same lines. Whereas before engaging with Communities for Youth and public health, you see the news cycle, and get bombarded with all the negative things that are going on in your community. Even in our master’s classes, we get taught about all the negative things that are going on with our community.

With Communities for Youth, it truly is about what we can do, how we can tackle all these things, and how it’s not that–it’s like Mount Everest. There are giant tasks to do, but it’s not impossible. 

Hailey Stewart: What has been the most rewarding part of your experience working with Communities for Youth so far? 

Kaydin Griffin: Getting to talk with our youth. I really love performing all the quantitative data work on our surveys. I’ve recently begun to love the qualitative work as well.

A professor in one of my data classes once mentioned in one of our courses that quantitative work tells you that there’s a story somewhere, but qualitative work tells you what that story is. That’s something that I’ve taken with me throughout this work, and getting to talk directly with the youth about their own data is incredibly rewarding. 

They’re super insightful for being so young. They know who they are, and they’re able to voice their thoughts and feelings so well. I didn’t think that I was capable of doing that when I was their age. Every time I leave a youth focus group, I’m refilled with a lot of hope about this upcoming generation’s well-being, and I learn a lot from them. 

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah, I think my most rewarding experience with Communities for Youth is how we engage the entire community. Oftentimes, with initiatives, it’s only people in that community who have the capacity to attend meetings and be plugged into the work that people are doing. 

However, with Communities for Youth, one of the main communities that we’ve been or part of the community that we’ve been pursuing is the Hispanic community. We hear them give us feedback about how they feel very engaged and how they appreciate all the effort we go to make sure that things are in their language and understanding, like this is about your kids as well, has been very rewarding.

Hailey Stewart: Yeah, for sure. So, what advice do you have for students interested in working alongside either Boise State or community health efforts, but just don’t know where to start or how to get involved? 

Kaydin Griffin: I would say reach out to previous students, current students, and faculty. A lot of my networking has started in the classroom.

One of my favorite things about the faculty in the College of Health Sciences in the School of Public and Population Health is how open they are and how much they want you to succeed. They’re always happy to sit down with you and chat about even how you are, how you’re doing, and how your classes are going. Then, also list out some potential opportunities that you want to secure, and how they can get you connected with those opportunities. It’s as easy as sending an email, just asking for their office hours, or chatting with them after class. Everyone is just super open, and they really want to see you do well in this space. 

Libbie Luevanos: I agree that the faculty in our program is very passionate, and they truly care. I completely understand that it’s terrifying sometimes to talk to your professor, but the one thing I would say is that they truly care about what they’re teaching. I think one of the things that helped me become engaged was talking to a professor and saying, I’m really interested in this that you’re talking about and continuing that conversation.

Hailey Stewart: Great, great. Well, to wrap up our episode, there are community members out there or students who want to follow along with Community for Youth efforts. How would they find you?

Libbie Luevanos: Well, we have a website, it’s communitiesforyouth.org, and we’re also on social media.

Kaydin Griffin: Yeah, you can find us on Facebook or Instagram. You can sign up for our monthly newsletters. And do you want to talk about what’s in the newsletters? 

Libbie Luevanos: Um, I’m not sure what’s in the newsletter. So for our newsletters, we do communicate key, actually, let me pull one up. 

Kaydin Griffin: No, I think that’s OK. We don’t have to talk about what’s in the newsletters. But on our website, you can sign up for our monthly newsletters and also join an action team. We typically do action team meetings once a month. It’s where you can come, sit with us, get an update on the work that we’re doing, the work that everyone else in this space is doing, and how we can all collaborate together, right? 

Libbie Luevanos: Yeah. Join our action teams. Make your voice heard. 

Hailey Stewart: Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for joining us on this episode today. 

Kaydin Griffin: Thank you so much for having us. 

Libbie Luevanos: Thank you for having us. 

Kaydin Griffin: We really appreciate it. 

James Sherpa: Thanks for listening to BroncoTales. Join us next week as we dive into the extracurriculars that come with being a nursing student.

From joining the Student Nurses Association to building relationships with faculty as a research assistant, Senior Nicolette Missbrenner shares the benefits she’s experienced from taking every opportunity to get involved outside of class. We’ll see you there!