Integrating Photovoice and Citizen Science: The Our Voice Initiative in Practice

Abstract

Community engagement methods like photovoice have allowed researchers to gather and incorporate the experiences and perspectives of community members in their work but have at times faced challenges regarding systematization, accessibility, and scalability. This practice note describes the Our Voice initiative, one example of a community-based participatory research framework that aims to build on photovoice theories and best practices and address these challenges by incorporating the use of a mobile app as well as elements of participatory action-based citizen science to support community-driven data collection, analysis, and advocacy. We explore the application of the Our Voice method and evaluation of multilevel participant and community outcomes across three different Bay Area, California, communities. In doing so, we hope to provide a potential example for practitioners of other community-based participatory research and photovoice-based models to draw from when working with diverse communities to integrate local perspectives and insights in the generation and implementation of sustainable community health improvements.