Developing principles of social change as a result of a Pasifika Youth Empowerment Program: A qualitative study.

ISSUE: Empowerment is a concept over-used in health promotion, yet it is an important process that can used in developing the capacity and capability of young people for creating social change to improve healthier lives. METHODS: The Youth Empowerment Program (YEP), a pilot study aimed at empowering 15 youth (18-24 years) to lead healthier lives. We present secondary outcomes of the original YEP study, using focus groups and mobile-mentary approaches to capture the impact of the YEP through the youths' understanding of the program. Thematic analyses to examine the pragmatic usefulness of the empowerment program. RESULTS: We identified three major themes: (aa) Knowledge: education and awareness of healthy living and understanding of the wider social health issues, compound the health complexities of obesity; (b) Youth as catalysts for change: the youth viewed themselves as agents of social change; and (c) Transformation: the youth recognised themselves as catalysts for change that can positively transform communities into action. CONCLUSION: This study contributes new insights and depth of understanding about how the empowerment program can strengthen the process of individual capacity in an effort to mobilise social change for the betterment of the whole community, particularly among indigenous Pasifika population groups. SO WHAT?: Developing empowerment principles will enable others to consider "how apply" empowerment more practically when working with young people and not use it flippantly with no real action-oriented outcome.

Understanding Pasifika youth and the obesogenic environment, Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand.

AIM: In New Zealand, the burden of obesity is greatest among Pacific people, especially in children and adolescents. We investigated the factors of the obesogenic environment that were indigenous to Pasifika youths' social-cultural context, their food purchasing behaviours, and associated anthropometric measures. METHODS: An exploratory study of 30 Pasifika youth aged 16-24 years in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand. RESULTS: A large proportion of the participants were obese (mean body mass index: 31.0kg/m2; waistto-hip ratio: 0.84; waist-to-height ratio: 0.6), suggesting that the future health and wellbeing trajectory of the studied Pasifika youth is poor. Purchasing behaviours of food and snacks over a 7-day period provided meaningful insights that could be a useful future research tool to examine the role of their physical environment on food access and availability. CONCLUSIONS: From this exploratory study, we highlight the following: (i) the future health trajectory of Pasifika youth is poor. Developing the youths' healthy lifestyle knowledge may lend itself to developing culturally relevant intervention programmes; (ii) identifying the enablers and barriers within the Pasifika ontext of an obesogenic environment can provide very useful information; (iii) use of spatial analysis using purchased food receipts adds to the current knowledge base of obesity-related research, although this was an exploratory investigation. We need to address these highlights if we are to reverse the trend of obesity for this population.