Stacked Up Against Us: Using Photovoice and Participatory Methods to Explore Structural Racism's Impact on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Inequities.

While structural racism has profound impacts on adolescent health, little is known about how youth synthesize racialized experiences and work to dismantle systems of oppression. This article provides an overview of a Youth Participatory Action Research study that used Photovoice and community mapping to explore how structural violence, like racism, impacts the sexual and reproductive health of historically excluded youth as they navigate unjust socio-political landscapes. Youth participants used photography and community maps to identify how the experience of bias, profiling, and tokenism impacted their ability to navigate complex social systems. With youth voices prioritized, participants explored ways to address structural racism in their lives. The importance of co-creating opportunities with and for youth in critical reflection of their lived experience is emphasized. Through an Arts and Cultural in Public Health framework, we provide an analysis of the ways structural racism functions as a gendered racial project and fundamental cause of adolescent sexual and reproductive health inequities, while identifying pathways toward liberation in pursuit of health and well-being.

No One-Size-Fits-All: Critical Narrative Intervention and Archeology of Self as Anti-Racist and Anti-Colonial Practices in Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.

Health education and research has historically relied on partnerships between institutions that focus on prescribing interventions rather than working with communities to identify and address systemic violence and oppression as root causes of health inequity. This perpetuates harmful colonial paradigms in health education. We present an autoethnographic perspective of our experiences as Black women with Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors to reexamine harmful assumptions and practices underpinning the field. Through digital storytelling, a qualitative research method, we explore Critical Narrative Intervention (CNI) and the Archeology of Self (AOS) as key methodological frameworks in decolonizing health education. Using our experiences of navigating complex mental health education and care, we highlight CNI and AOS as creative, asset-based, narrative, and participatory approaches to addressing health inequity and promoting an anti-colonist and anti-racist public health paradigm. We call practitioners to explore these methodologies in reimagining how we engage with diverse, historically excluded communities, while critically interrogating our own biases as we move toward equitable partnerships and caring relationships.