Smith discusses Communities for Youth on podcast

Hosted by Associate Clinical Professor Chris Saunders, the podcast explores the human side of research and shines a spotlight on the vast variety of research being done at Boise State.

In the show's most recent episode, Smith talks about her journey to Boise, her early career as a K-12 teacher and her passion for working on the issues young people face.

Youth feelings of isolation and poor mental health outcomes, enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted the need for safe and open community conversations on adolescent mental health in Idaho - leading to the creation of Communities for Youth (C4Y) in 2022. Smith founded C4Y alongside SPPH faculty, students and community partners.

Getting back to her K-12 roots, Smith and her team set out to build a stronger understanding of the individual needs of Idaho's school communities.

"Schools are this beautiful institution that our society came together to create to help support families and communities to raise our young people," Smith said in the episode. "And there is so much potential in that environment to sort of help shore up what all the other parts of society are doing for our young people."

Often, Smith says, people who have great intentions to take care of young people focus on moments of crisis and get lost in "putting out fires," rather than thinking about how to change the conditions that lead to those fires in the first place.

In this episode, Smith dives into what has made C4Y and her own research so compelling: using an upstream prevention approach in tackling youth mental health challenges.

"The idea of upstream prevention is going further up and thinking about what are the conditions in a community that make it just more likely for young people to thrive - to reach their full potential," Smith said.

C4Y uses locally collected data and this upstream prevention approach to bring schools, parents, community members and young people into the conversation. C4Y then helps build capacity across school and community members to take effective action to support the best possible outcomes for youth.

Nearly five years after launching C4Y, Smith and her team continue to work with a growing variety of Idaho school districts and community partners, such as St. Luke's and the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation, to build localized coalitions of engaged community members.

"The power of bringing our community together is incredible," Smith said.

Learn more about Communities for Youth and ways get involved.

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