The past few years have been filled with many opportunities to work alongside young people aged 12 to 26 in doing what Community Science and I personally care most about — helping youth drive the changes they want to see in their communities. I first came to this work nearly 20 years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, doing research on coping through writing for high school seniors in a New Orleans high school. This research highlighted the impact that English and Language Arts teachers could make by facilitating writing and discussion sessions to help students deal with feelings of loss, frustration, and hope after many of them lost their homes and connections to family and friends due to the storm (Alvarez, 2010). This work led me to many other post-disaster community recovery studies, including housing in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake; the effects of the 2010 BP oil spill on young people and families in Gulf Coast communities engaged in the seafood and shipbuilding industries; and the importance of coordination of governmental and community-based wrap around services for children and families following disasters.
My early work was grounded in studies that shifted the narrative of sociological disaster research, specifically noting that for decades — many studies dating back to the 1960’s — often overlooked the post-disaster experiences of children and youth and instead turned to caretakers, mental health practitioners, and educators versus speaking directly to young people (Anderson, 2005; Peek, 2008; Peek et al., 2010). Furthermore, many of the early studies on children and disasters focused solely on vulnerability, pointing to how children are disproportionately at risk to the impacts of disasters because of their psychological, physical, and educational vulnerabilities. However, these studies often failed to lift up youth agency and highlight how young people have contributed their knowledge and creativity to disaster recovery, showing how youth have engaged in recovery efforts such as sharing educational disaster information with friends and family members, providing peer counseling, assisting in aid collection and distribution, and participating in planning and rebuilding efforts (Anderson, 2005; Peek, 2008). These studies were at the crux of my work — in my own efforts to understand the experiences of young people through their own words.
Over the years, my research became less focused solely on disaster recovery of youth, and more holistically focus on community resilience, which has provided me with a framework for understanding how acute and chronic stressors impact young people — in particular young people from historically marginalized communities. In studying community resilience, I learned that resilience focuses on a combination of how both acute and chronic stressors affect communities. For me, the acute side of my work was in understanding how natural and human caused disasters impact communities — in particular, youth and their families (Gilbert, 2013; Gilbert, 2018; Gilbert, 2019). My more recent work has grown to examine how young people are interacting with systems and the chronic stressors in their day-to-day lives, including the education, housing, child welfare, education, healthcare, and criminal justice system — often shedding light on how young people are experiencing these systems in a disconnected and disjointed way.
I continue to see my work on disaster recovery as connected, because in many of the communities that we work in — acute disasters are still happening. For instance, for our work in New Orleans focused on young people connecting to employment and educational opportunities, the long legacy of Katrina is still in place from a disaster that is still affecting generations today that were young children or not even alive when Katrina happened. There is also the ongoing potential for those acute stressors to happen in the day-to-day lives of young people. And they already have. In just the past five years, youth in New Orleans have experienced a range of storms, including Hurricane Ida (2021) during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is also the looming piece that acute stressors, such as disasters, could happen. Studies have shown that nationwide the number of weather and climate-related disasters is increasing, including storms, tornados, wildfires, droughts, and heatwaves (NOAA, 2024). In 2023 alone, there were 28 weather and climate disasters in the U.S., surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020, totaling $92.9 billion in damage (United Nations, 2021).
Reflections from the Field: 3 Key Takeaways
Here are three key takeaways from my work as a disaster researcher and how they shape how we approach the research, evaluation, and strategy building work we do at Community Science in support of children, youth, and families. My lens brings attention to:
- The role of uncertainty and chronic stress and how this impacts young people’s access to opportunities. There is longstanding literature in the field of disaster research that documents the impacts of uncertainty, revealing the social, emotional, and psychological affect that children and youth may face, for instance around issues of displacement from school, home, and social supports (Pfefferbaum et al., 2017). Uncertainty can also cause young people to feel helpless and overwhelmed by immediate concerns and fears about how life may be different moving forward. For instance, in my study in the aftermath of the BP Oil Spill, youth aged 12 to 17 reported that they held deep seated fears about toxic contamination in the Gulf Coast, not knowing if there may be health impacts because of the spill and reconciling whether it was still safe to eat local seafood when the waters reopened. Similarly, youth expressed concern over financial uncertainty that plagued their families, as many had one or both parents in the seafood or shipbuilding industries (Gilbert, 2019).
In my current work around young people’s experiences with disconnection from school, work, and other key social supports — I often think about the looming impact of uncertainty. For instance, across multiple projects we constantly see that young people are lacking stable and affordable housing. This chronic stress is extremely challenging for youth given that housing serves as a fundamental cornerstone of stability, with the ability to impact young people’s education, employment, health, and emotional well-being. However, lack of affordable housing is a huge source of uncertainty that creates challenges for accessing school and work pathways, especially for those without family support and resources (Community Science, 2024).
- How chronic and acute stressors further exacerbate existing inequities and social capital can make us more resilient. There has been much discussion in sociological disaster research about how disasters create acute stress that exacerbates existing inequities (Tierney, 2019) — often due to one’s race or ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, geographic location, and age, income, and ability or disability status. Similarly, my work at Community Science has shown me that chronic stressors follow the same path, often having worse impacts on young people, because of their social identities or intersections of identities. This points to the importance of understanding how identity shapes young people’s experience, especially for those who may be facing layered trauma or injustices. It also highlights the importance of social capital, which can be a factor that helps us overcome inequities rooted in our identity and have strong markers of resilience, because we have a network of relationships to support us (Halpern, 2005; Ritchie & Gill, 2018).
Our recent work at Community Science has bolstered ways that social capital can be further strengthened for young people, lifting up the role that leaders in youth-serving nonprofit organizations play in supporting youth and the need for further strengthening of the nonprofit infrastructure. For instance, many youth-serving partners we work with practice “relentless outreach,” in that they make many attempts to contact and engage in social emotional well-being checks with a young person, often using many channels, such as in-person; text; call; and indirect contact through a family member, friend, or loved one. By holding young people closely, no matter how many attempts it may take or what they may be going through, community-based organizations are able to expand the social capital network of youth.
- A widespread sense of hope among young people, and an understanding of why hope is important for mental health and social emotional well-being. Despite that my long-standing work has focused on the impacts of stressors, both chronic and acute, I have observed so much hope among young people — and they constantly show that both vulnerability and resilience can co-exist. This is particularly important given that studies have shown that hopefulness related to improved coping and well-being (Graham, 2023). Specifically, for adolescents, hope is also critical for realizing and achieving future goals into adulthood (Schmid, 2011).
In a recent study (Community Science, 2024), our research team explored hope and found that in 74 interviews of young people experiencing disconnection from school and work, every interviewee was able to share some insights into their goals and aspirations and what they hope for in the future. Overall, the most common goals were: 1) doing better for their children, 2) giving back to others, 3) becoming more financially stable, 4) furthering their education, and 5) wanting to move to another place. Most young people were also able to speak to supports they need to help achieve their goals, including how the systems intended to support them (e.g., education system) can better come alongside them in achieving their aspirations. My colleague Danielle Gilmore wrote about her specific lens and passion for dealing with our education system as a social determinant of health in this post.
“Construction would really help me because I really want to build something for the children. I want to build something for the homeless where you don’t have to be on the streets no more. I want to do that in every community that I go to. I want to help every community that I can.”
~ 23-year-old African American Young Woman from Bridgeport
Young people are our future, and it is imperative that we listen to and support them. Our research and evaluation methodologies and strategy design recognize and are responsive to the challenges our future generation has experienced and may be continuing to experience. These methodologies ensure that the questions and solutions we co-create with them and the insights we generate with them are culturally, contextually, and age-appropriate so that the programs, policies, and other systemic changes that support them are more meaningful and impactful for their ability to reach their full potential.
At Community Science, we continue to learn from and hone our research, evaluation, and strategy design and implementation practices to ensure that we continuously center equity in our work with young people. The projects and experiences mentioned above have contributed to this common goal.
About The Author
Brandi Gilbert, Ph.D., Senior Associate, brings expertise in researching topics and evaluating initiatives related community resilience, especially efforts that build community capacity to respond to natural disaster. She also has extensive experience working with youth to build their capacity to lead change in their community. She is actively involved in the evaluation profession, is a graduate of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI), and then led the program for six years.