Three hundred Black and Latinx teens in Chicago will be recruited to participate in the first clinical trial to measure the potential health benefits of youth-driven racial justice activism. The five-year study, funded by a $3.8 million grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, will assess whether activism can lower depression symptoms in minoritized teens, as well as alter physiological factors known to be increased with exposure to racism, such as blood pressure and markers of stress and inflammation in the blood.
Led by Nia Heard-Garris, MD, MBA, MSc, from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Elan Hope, PhD, from Policy Research Associates, the study will randomly assign half of the participants to the intervention group and the other half to the control group. Teens in the intervention group will receive summer-long training on the skills needed to conduct impactful advocacy campaigns, while the control group will learn what Dr.
Heard-Garris calls "adulting 101" or life skills ranging from typical adult tasks, like banking to succeeding in college. Data on psychological and physiological measures will be collected from both groups at baseline and then at six-month intervals for two years after the intervention. "This clinical trial is innovative in that it addresses activism as health promotion," said Dr.
Heard-Garris, researcher and pediatrician at Lurie Children's and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwester.