News
MyVoice Final Four: Students Compete in the 2021 MyVoice Data Challenge
The Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) in partnership with faculty and research staff from Michigan Medicine helped us host the 2021 MyVoice Data Challenge on Youth Health and Wellness. The goal of the virtual team event was to get students and learners involved in how MyVoice makes sense of the hundreds of thousands of text messages we receive as part of our weekly survey to American youth. Teams were tasked with creating processes using data science methodologies that would analyze MyVoice data and develop new methods for deriving meaning and given two months to work on their best ideas.
MyVoice Youth Opinions About Title X Funding and Policy Discussed on Podcast
Shortly after the United States saw major changes to a federal policy on reproductive health in 2019, MyVoice asked our cohort of youth what they thought. They responded in over 5,000 text messages to us, as part of an October 2019 text message poll on Title X. Those responses were synthesized by a team of MyVoice researchers and summarized in a paper published in the academic research journal Contraception, just last month. The paper is titled “Youth opinions about Title X funding and policy in the United States: A mixed methods text message survey” and was featured in a podcast discussion with the journal’s editors. Stream the episode via Apple Podcast or on the web.
MyVoice Presents Student Perspectives on Campus COVID-19 Testing Strategies
In a live webinar hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, MyVoice researcher and University of Michigan student Xochitl Amaro joined a panel of experts to discuss campus COVID-19 testing strategies and to share MyVoicers’ experiences across the country, collected through the MyVoice national poll of youth. The title of the talk, held February 22, 2021, was “Adoption and Implementation of Campus COVID-19 Testing Strategies: Webinar.” The goal of the event was to highlight key lessons about campus COVID-19 testing programs, share additional available resources, and extend beyond scientific and technical aspects of testing to encompass how uptake of successful testing programs intersects with decisions about how to operate safely and how to manage the pandemic in campus communities.
MyVoice Presents at CDC Webinar on COVID-19 Safety Practices Among Youth
This Wednesday, MyVoice junior researchers Xochitl Amaro and Jayde Frederick will join MyVoice director Tammy Chang on an open Zoom webinar with the CDC. The title of the event is Behavioral Strategies to Encourage Protective COVID-19 Behaviors Among College and University Students, and they’ll be joined by experts from the CDC Vaccine Task Force, the CDC Community Interventions & Critical Populations Task Force, the American College Health Association, and our poll crush, the Harris Poll.
MyVoice research selected for 2020 list of the best research on adolescent health
My Voice research on active shooter drills was selected as among the most important and influential papers of the year published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2020. "Active Shooter Drills in the United States: A National Study of Youth Experiences and...
COVID-19 and College Campuses: MyVoice Provides Youth Perspectives for a 2020 National Academies Report
In its third collaboration with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), data from the MyVoice National Poll of Youth shines in a new national report that provides recommendations on how to stem the spread of COVID-19 infections on college campuses. The report, Encouraging Protective COVID-19 Behaviors among College Students, is a “rapid consultation” that offer lessons learned from the 2020 fall semester regarding COVID-19 testing and guidance on student behavior, as college administrators plan for the 2021 spring semester. Quotes from MyVoice participants feature predominantly in its first pages, reflecting the lived experience of college students across the country.
A Different Struggle: What the Pandemic Is Doing to Kids and Teens
While children likely are infected at much lower rates than adults, and have lower rates of becoming symptomatic, the psychological effects of COVID-19 have hit them hard and are likely to leave lasting emotional scars. Their social development is being hampered, many are scared of the ways the pandemic will impact them and their families, and mental health resources are strained. Kids and teens are feeling the dearth of socialization opportunities more acutely than adults, too, and for good reason.
In Election 2020, youth share views on health care and political participation
Pandemic and health issues are top of mind for the election, and changes to reproductive health funding are unpopular among MyVoice participants, according to new 2020 polling. New analysis of a set of 2020 MyVoice polls finds that most youth are unaware of changes to...
What do teens & young adults need to get through the COVID-19 pandemic?
Last spring, the pandemic sent them home from high school or college, derailed their sports and activities, and sent them into “essential” workplaces that carried a new health risk. The summer has come and gone, and now they’re facing months more of living, learning, working and trying to have a social life in the time of COVID-19. But what do people in their teens and early 20s need to get through these times? New data from a MyVoice study based at the University of Michigan give some important insights.