Visioning Sessions With Youth: Empowering the Next Generation to Participate in a Community Health Assessment

Abstract

The objective of this intervention was to conduct visioning sessions with focus groups of youth at each of the public schools in a rural Western Kentucky county as part of the community health assessment process. The participants were provided a sheet of paper with “What Would My Healthy Community Look Like?” The target population was youths who participated in student groups or organizations that were selected to be focus groups from the public schools in the county. The visioning session results were analyzed through a two-phase qualitative coding process. The top feature identified by the visioning sessions was farmer’s markets/access to healthy food (n=86). Youth are our future generation; their perspectives on the health needs and issues in the community must be included in community health assessments.