We are proud to share a project we have been working on, in partnership with the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The MyVoice research team worked with a committee of experts at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) to develop a national report on adolescent development and pathways to ensure long-term, positive, and equitable trajectories for youth.
The National Academies report is titled The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth. The report combines multidisciplinary research–including original MyVoice youth testimonies, qualitative findings, and analysis–to provide an updated understanding of the neurobiological and socio-behavioral science of adolescent development.
The report identifies actionable policy and practice recommendations–in social and environmental areas like education, health care, child welfare, and the juvenile justice system–with the goal of ensuring that all people have equitable opportunity to “flourish and thrive” during the critical period of adolescent development.
MyVoice was commissioned to provide real-time youth voices and youth-centered qualitative analysis to the National Academies committee report. The NAM x MyVoice collaboration represents a new approach to generating scientific-based national policy recommendations.
MyVoice founder Tammy Chang had been waiting for this kind of opportunity.
“The fact that we can use MyVoice to bring in youth voice – not just experts–in national scientific and policy dialogue is so exciting! It’s an opportunity for youth to say, ‘Hey this is what is really happening. This is what I’m experiencing right now.””
Data and analysis from the MyVoice team was leveraged to validate and ground the report’s multidisciplinary scientific review in real life, narrative experience. It is one of many efforts to activate MyVoice on a national scale, through partnerships with experts in adolescent policy and well-being.
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In October 2018, we asked a subset of MyVoicers, about 1,400 participants aged 14 to 24, two sets of MyVoice polls–the first surveyed youth on their experiences transitioning from kid to adult and the second round asked youth to talk about the local resources they see, use, and want in their community. Their free-form text message responses was then processed by MyVoice’s hybrid, sprint-style analysis–which relies on 1.) natural language processing developed by a team of MyVoice AI expert, 2.) a multidisciplinary, multigenerational research team of health services researchers, clinicians, social scientists, graduate students, youth, and 3.) coffee and snacks. Read about MyVoice’s unique approach and methodology.
The study — undertaken by the Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications — was sponsored by the Funders for Adolescent Science Translation, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bezos Family Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Ford Foundation, Hilton Foundation, National Public Education Support Fund, Raikes Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is one of three academies that make up the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) in the United States. Operating under the 1863 Congressional charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academies are private, nonprofit institutions that work outside of government to provide objective advice on matters of science, technology, and health.