Voices of Black Youth:Creating Communicative Spaces in the Context of Heart Disease among African American Teenagers in Marion County Indiana

This dissertation sought to document the communicative and organizing processes in the executing of a culture centered heart health project among black youth in Marion County, Indiana. Culture Centered Approach (CCA) (Airhihenbuwa, 1995, Dutta, 2008) foregrounds equity and social justice as sine qua non for addressing disparities. It promotes engagement of cultural members as equal partners in social change processes, a move that reverses the unequal power that characterize dominant projects (Dutta, 2008).Seeped in the theoretical framework of CCA, I conducted 11-month ethnographic study to uncover the communicative and processes of engaging teenagers as equal partners in the planning and implementing of a heart campaign targeting their peers. I conducted face-to-face interviews, wrote reflexive journal entries, and participated in message tailoring workshops. Through these multiple data sets, I uncovered the following (a) the infusion of cultural voices reverses the unequal power that characterize dominant projects (b) engaging communities as equal partners is a complex process and often characterized by tensions that border on power inequities (c) a culture centered project evolves through organic process that is often characterized by dialogue and collective decision making (d) participation in culture centered process is complex and also characterized by tensions about power, individual versus collective subjectivities (e) Reflexivity is a crucial methodological tool in culture centered process. The findings corroborate culture centered stance on rupturing structural barriers as an entry point to addressing disparities and creating a just world. From programming perspective, this study echo the need for ‘recalibrating’ health projects from below.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication

Year

2015

Author dc:creator

• Anaele, Agaptus

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mohan Dutta
• Stacey Connaughton
• Ambar Basu
• Lala Acharya
• Titi Okoror

Repository record dc:identifier

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/1446

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:docs.lib.purdue.edu:open_access_dissertations-2662