Empowering immigrant youth in Chicago: utilizing CBPR to document the impact of a Youth Health Service Corps program.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an approach that engages community residents with a goal of influencing change in community health systems, programs, or policies. As such, CBPR is particularly relevant to historically marginalized communities that often have not directly benefited from the knowledge research produces. This article analyzes a youth empowerment program, Chicago's Youth Health Service Corps, from a CBPR perspective. The purpose of this work was (1) to discuss Youth Health Service Corps as a health promotion program, (2) examine the use of CBPR within the immigrant community, and (3) discuss preliminary findings using a model on critical youth empowerment.