The Adolescent Health Promotion Lab is overseen by Dr. Elizabeth Weybright, and includes undergraduate Human Development and graduate Prevention Science students. Recognizing adolescence as a critical period of biological, cognitive, and social development, we seek to promote health and prevention risk behavior within out of school time contexts. Using a prevention science framework we work to identify what contributes to healthy adolescent development and use this information to develop and/or refine preventive interventions that promote the health of adolescents and emerging adults.
Research Projects, Programs, and Opportunities
Recent News
March 2021 –
Congratulations to Student Presenters and Award Winners at WSU Showcase!
Multiple students had presentations accepted at the 2021 Virtual Academic Showcase including:
- 1st Place Winner and Graduate Student Erica Doering – “Can’t you see that I’m getting bored?”: College Student’s Conceptualization of Boredom
- 3rd Place Winner and Graduate Student Elizabeth Purser – “I’ve been flourishing”: The association between flourishing and substance use in college students.
- Graduate Student Faith Price – Marijuana use and American Indian/Alaska Native youth in Washington state.
- Research Proposal Early Career Award Winner and Undergraduate McNair Student April Salmeron-Lauriano – Family Contributors in Adolescent Alcohol Use of Latinx Communities
New Article Alert!
- An article co-authored by Dr. Weybright in collaboration with Extension is out in the Journal of Youth Development. Titled”Using the 4-H Essential Elements to Evaluate Teen Programming,” this article reviews evaluation results from WA State 4-H teens from the perspective of the 4-H Essential Elements and provides implications for future programming. Find the full text here: https://jyd.pitt.edu/ojs/jyd/article/view/21-16-1-FA-3
February 2021 – Weybright’s Work on Boredom Highlighted in Washington State Magazine
October 2020 – Weybright part of team awarded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant
- Dr. Weybright is partner with Dr. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar from the University of Washington and a team of WSU Extension faculty to better understand the culture of handgun carrying among rural youth. See UW press release here.
September 2020 –
Weybright Receives Funding from USDA for Opioid Prevention Efforts
- Weybright was awarded $392,862 in funding by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA) for a project titled Universal Prevention Approaches to Addressing Opioid Use: Building Capacity Within Rural Families and Extension Personnel.
Boredom and COVID-19
-
Figure of tweets mentioning COVID-19 and bored. Starting in mid-March, Weybright began collecting data on unique tweets with #COVID19 and “bored” in tweet text. Throughout March, we saw a steady increase in the unique number of mentions likely as social distancing efforts, school closures, and teleworking started. These early tweets generally talked about anticipating (and preventing) boredom and reporting feelings of boredom in self and others who seemed bored. As the weeks progressed, the number of boredom mentions peaked mid-week, but overall mentions began to decrease in April. By May 19th, the number of #COVID19 and bored declined to under 50 mentions per day. We suspect early-COVID19 mentions were mostly around anticipatory boredom which never materialized. Read more on Dr. Weybright’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/EWeybrightPhD/status/1244032441217515520
July 2020 –
Weybright named Interim Director of Extension Youth and Families Unit.
- For the next year, Dr. Weybright will lead WSU Extension’s Youth and Families Unit. See full story here.
Lab members author blog post on boredom for the Society for Research on Adolescence.
- Dr. Weybright and graduate student Erica Doering discuss how to help adolescents cope with boredom during a summer of COVID-19. Blog post here.
May 2020 – Undergraduate research assistant Anaderi Iniguez recognized at conference.
- Anaderi was recognized at the (now postponed) Society for Research in Human Development conference for Most Outstanding Undergraduate Research. See notice here: http://www.srhdonline.org/srhd-2020.html. Her poster titled “Maximizing the Retention of Nutritional Knowledge and Healthy Behaviors Through the Teen-Teaching Model” evaluated teen outcomes in our YA4-H! program. Congratulations Anaderi!
April 2020 – Weybright featured in story about COVID-19 and boredom.
- Dr. Weybright contributed to story on how COVID-19 relates to boredom and how parents can support their children. Link to story
March 2020 –
Graduate student Faith Price successfully defends her Master’s thesis!
Weybright receives the CAHNRS Early Career Excellence award.
- This award acknowledges outstanding contributions in research, teaching and/or extension in any CAHNRS discipline during the early phases of a faculty member’s academic career.
February 2020 – Graduate student Faith Price presents a poster at The Academy for Leisure Sciences annual conference.
- Faith’s poster was titled “A scoping review of outdoor recreation prevention programs serving Indigenous youth”