Photovoice Project

The National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration sponsored the HEALing Communities Study (HCS) to test the impact of implementing a menu of evidence-based practices across healthcare, behavioral health, justice, and other sectors, paired with community engagement and communication campaigns, in reducing opioid overdose deaths. The Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Ohio sites developed a Photovoice protocol providing for comparison across sectors and positionalities in relationship to the opioid epidemic (e.g., professional service providers, people with lived experience, advocates, etc.). This project is innovative in the scale of its engagement of diverse stakeholders and communities to understand one of the most complex public health issues: the opioid epidemic.

Photovoice is well-suited to increase engagement of diverse perspectives in local health department (LHD) community health assessment (CHA)/community health improvement planning (CHIP) practice and has been highlighted in the latest Public Health Accreditation Board standards as a possible CHA primary data collection strategy. This project involved integrating the Photovoice method into the 2022-23 Clark County Health Department CHA process to improve community engagement and equity.

This project involves facilitating and studying implementation of two stigma-reduction evidence-based practices on the University of South Florida (USF) campus — Photovoice and This is My Brave — to explore their relative effects in increasing participation, reducing stigma, and improving help-seeking attitudes and behaviors among not only students but also faculty and staff as participants and audience members. Co-PIs Dr. Kristin Kosyluk and Dr. McGladrey received a USF College of Behavioral and Community Sciences internal research grant in fall 2022 to fund implementation of this project in spring 2023.

Youth Move Suncoast partnered Dr. McGladrey to help train their staff to conduct a Photovoice project to assess how children and youth understand their needs and desires for mental health/recovery peer support and whether and how these preferences have shifted with their experiences of social distancing and remote learning amidst the pandemic. Their efforts are being supported by a grant to NAMI Sarasota and Manatee Counties/Youth Move Suncoast from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation and Barancik Foundation, were shared with the Sarasota County Behavioral Health Stakeholders Consortium in May 2023, and led to the development of a county-wide youth advisory council.

Dr. McGladrey and two undergraduate researchers partnered with the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department to integrate Photovoice into their mixed-methods data collection for their 2024 community health assessment to understand community needs and strengths related to mental and behavioral health. This collaboration led to a CHI Saint Joseph Health grant to LexArts to fund continued Photovoice data collection with the YMCA Black Achievers, the Senior Center, the Hope Center, Bluegrass Care Navigators, the Kentucky Center for Grieving Children and Families, and other community partners. The expanded Photovoice project will be featured in the LexArts “Arts and Health” symposium in November 2024.