Latinx Youth Resilience: Lessons From Empowered and Community-Engaged Research in New Mexico

Abstract

Latinx youth of New Mexico have suicide rates higher than the national average and face complex challenges to health and well-being. This calls for prioritization of research and interventions at the systems level, including those that consider social determinants of health. This manuscript highlights two innovative community-engaged projects that address Latinx youth behavioral health. The first project capitalized on a partnership between university personnel and a community organizing agency that serves undocumented and mixed-status youth, young adults, and their families to qualitatively examine their experiences in U.S. medical and educational systems. Emergent themes from their voiced experiences informed future interventions and policies to address perpetual fear, race- and immigrant-based trauma, family disruption, and systemic barriers and build on culturally based resilience factors. The second project focused on shifting narratives about power through multimedia storytelling to impact systemic changes to improve the well-being of Latinx youth. Implications emphasize the need to address behavioral health beyond the individual level, to family, community, sociopolitical, and historical contexts. Furthermore, centering the voices of marginalized communities in research results in better informed interventions and policies that impact their lives. Finally, interventionists and researchers need to include critical perspectives that place power structures at the forefront of health inequities among marginalized groups. Use of democratic, co-creative processes of community-engagement allow for the development of relevant and meaningful scholarly products and collaborative efforts in advocacy of Latinx youth behavioral health and education legislation and policies.