YEAH is a YPAR intervention that involves conducting a photovoice project to explore youth perspectives on the structural determinants of community violence and developing a theater performance to share the key themes and action priorities generated from photovoice with youth and adults in their community.

The team will conduct individual-level surveys at baseline, 8 weeks, and 3 months to assess individual-level impacts of YEAH on youth participants

Youth who are randomized to waitlist control will be offered the 8-session YEAH intervention after data collection is complete with the YEAH immediate intervention group

The Youth Empowered Advocating for Health (YEAH) program is a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) intervention aimed at addressing community violence by fostering youth and community healing. It combines photovoice and theater arts performances.

In photovoice sessions, Black youth explore structural determinants of community violence through a participatory research process. Guided by trained facilitators, youth learn the method after obtaining parental consent and youth assent. Using the structured SHOWED framework, they analyze and discuss images, generating ideas for social action. During the photovoice sessions, photo assignments will be completed, with discussions recorded, analyzed for themes, and shared for validation.

The final four sessions will integrate these themes into theater arts performances, allowing youth to creatively express insights and experiences, fostering empowerment and social change.

Youth prosocial behavior will be measured using a scale developed by Grills et al. (2016) which assesses youth endorsement of behaviors that build connections with others in the past 2 weeks (α=.92). This 12-item scale was developed from items from the Multidimensional Well-being Assessment Scale, and uses a Likert-type scale (1=never; 5=always), with higher mean scores indicating greater likelihood of engaging in behaviors that reflect care and concern for others

Youth aggressive behavior will be measured using 10 items adapted from the California Healthy Kids Survey. This measure asks participants how often they engaged in behaviors such as yelling at teachers, hitting or punching someone, or teasing another student in the past month (α=.88). These items assess the frequency of behaviors with 5 response categories (0,1,2,3,4+).

This will be measured with 14 items (items 12-25) from the Community Experiences Questionnaire assessing exposure to violence by witnessing (CEQ-WIT). This scale asks the respondent to rank the frequency with which they have experienced each item on a 4-point rating scale (1=never, 2=once, 3=a few times, 4=lots of times). Scores are calculated by averaging respondents' ratings for the scale

Racial identity will be measured using the multidimensional inventory of Black identity-teen (MIBI-T), including centrality, private regard, public regard, nationalism, humanism, assimilation, and oppressed minority. The scale includes 21 items on a Likert-type scale (1=really disagree; 5=agree), with higher mean scores indicating more positive racial identity