Date: Friday, April 11, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hello! Pam Drake, Kristin Kennedy, and Pam Anderson here from ETR’s Reimagining Young People’s Sexual Health Equity (RYSE) Innovation Hub to discuss youth-engaged developmental evaluation (DE) in sexual health innovation development.
RYSE supports multiple Innovation Development Teams (IDTs) in moving sexual health innovations from concept to scale. We work with our Youth Innovation Advisors and subject matter experts to help IDTs center youth voices throughout innovation development and address inequities in adolescent sexual health. DE is central to our process as it allows for feedback and adaptation of new interventions while they are developed and tested.
During our first round of funding, we used a youth-informed group concept mapping (GCM) process to identify five guiding principles that highlight how adults can share power with youth, especially those whose voices often go unheard. These principles emphasize a power shift in program development, recognizing youth as experts and incorporating their insights to co-design spaces, content, materials, and facilitation. At RYSE, these five principles are foundational in guiding IDTs to equitably engage youth throughout the innovation process.
The principles share a focus with DE on process over outcomes. This approach ensures that adults share power with youth at every stage. In DE, the evaluator actively participates in the process as both a member of the design team and an impartial guide. The process prioritizes the journey as much as the final product, with evaluators continuously adapting their support to meet the team’s capacity and needs. Evaluators also assess how youth voices are amplified or neglected. Ultimately, DE ensures that IDTs fully integrate the principles’ tenets into their innovation development process.
Involve and Ask about Youth in Your Data-Collection?. All funded Innovation Hubs create an Innovation Capacity Assessment Tool (ICAT) to assess IDTs’ potential and support needs. Developed with youth input, the RYSE ICAT measures knowledge and skills in health equity and youth engagement in sexual health design. Young people apply the tool throughout the IDT selection process.
Create a Youth-Focused Learning Agenda?. The RYSE learning agenda tests and refines our theoretical model for supporting teams in youth-driven sexual health innovation. It focuses on elevating youth voice in design and translating findings into actionable products.
Highlight Youth in Storytelling throughout Design and Development?. RYSE defines a successful learning journey as on that focuses on integrating youth voice and health equity into innovation development. IDTs work with RYSE staff to showcase their innovation journeys and youth involvement through various storytelling methods involving the young people on their teams.
Empowering youth perspectives is central to innovation and sustainability. Positioning youth as experts and decision-makers allows their voices to lead the innovation process from ideation to implementation and evaluation.? If we actively involve young people throughout, we can create programs that are more tailored to their preferences and needs, resulting in solutions that better resonate with the end users and leading to better recruitment, retention, and results.
Developmental evaluation provides a framework for integrating youth voice. Emphasize the innovation journey, continuous assessment, and co-creation to ensure that youth perspectives are embedded throughout the development process. ?
Integrate youth voice into developmental evaluation tools. Prioritize integrating youth perspectives into the design and application of tools like capacity assessments and learning agendas. These tools are essential for guiding and measuring the innovation journey, as they help assess team capabilities, track progress, and ensure that innovations effectively address health equity and youth engagement. ?
Download ETRs Five Principles for Meaningful Youth Engagement Toolkit, detailing how to uplift youth as experts in program design and delivery.
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