'Youth Built Change: Creating Community Researchers' partners with high school juniors to enable them to conduct research on drug abuse and addiction in two geographically and socio-demographically different settings that are both dealing with significant drug problems in their communities: rural Appalachia and urban Cincinnati.
High school juniors work over the course of an academic year to develop their own research questions, to collect and analyze data, and to present results to academic audiences and to stakeholders and policymakers in their own communities. These students conduct research projects that are directly tied to their lives and are engaged as shared decision-makers in the research process.