Comparative evaluation of two work experience approaches for predominantly Black youth in a rural community: implications for public health workforce development

Abstract

Context:

In order to create a more diverse workforce, there is a need to involve historically excluded youth in public health-related work. Youth involvement in asset-based work experience approaches is especially relevant for rural areas with workforce shortages.

Objective:

To explore the public health workforce development implications of community-based career exploration and asset mapping work experience from the perspective of Black youth.

Design:

We used qualitative in-depth interviews with youth, ages 14 to 22 years old, who participated in a work experience program anchored in several rural counties in southeastern United States. A phenomenological lens was applied for qualitative analyses with iterative, team-based data coding. Participants were also surveyed pre and post program to supplement findings.

Program:

A rural community-based organization’s work experience program consisted of two tracks: 1) Youth Connect - a career exploration track that included work placement within community agencies and 2) MAPSCorps - a track that employs youth to conduct asset mapping for their community.

Results:

We interviewed 28 of 31 total participants in the two tracks. We uncovered four emergent profiles in how youth described shifts in their perceptions of community: 1) Skill Developers, 2) Community Questioners, 3) Community Observers, and 4) Community Enthusiasts. In comparing between tracks, youth who participated in work experience that involved asset mapping uniquely described increased observation and expanded view of community resources and had greater increases in research self-efficacy than youth who participated only in career exploration.

Conclusion:

Asset mapping work experience that is directly placed in rural communities can expose Black youth to and engage them in essential public health services (assessing and mobilizing community assets) that impact their community. This type of program, directly integrated into rural communities rather than placed near academic centers, could play a role in creating a more diverse public health workforce.

Introduction

Public health has prioritized the creation of a more diverse workforce.^1,2 To do so, there is a need to involve historically excluded youth in public health-related work. For example, involvement of Black youth has potential to increase their exposure to the field and develop relevant public health competencies. The exposure and involvement of youth is especially relevant for rural areas with persistent workforce shortages in health services.³ Rural workforce shortages highlight the need to reduce “brain drain”, wherein rural youth are drawn to opportunities in urban areas.⁴ To remedy these problems, work experience programs must consider not only skill development but youths’ perception of community. Thus, youth work experience approaches informed by asset-based community development (ABCD) - wherein, youth identify local resources, specifically in service to their local community and public health, while building professional skills, appreciation of community strengths, and reinforce ties to the rural community – are important to consider and evaluate.

Work experience is an important aspect of youth development. Studies have found that work experience in teenage years is associated with more consistent and higher earning employment in young and later adult years.^5–9 Work experience can improve youth’s self-efficacy in many domains including beliefs about one’s general abilities and capacity to be financially secure.^10,11 Unfortunately, work experience programs for youth have not been common in public health. In parallel, the demand for youth work experience programs outpaces the resources and supply, especially for youth of color and in rural areas.^12,13 The field of public health could help fill this gap.

Research shows that certain features are key to effective work experience programs. Working many hours per week in jobs with limited opportunities for skill development can lead to high stress levels and low academic achievement.¹⁴ Alternatively, internships or jobs with moderate hours that have career-like features have been associated with a range of beneficial outcomes.^14,15 These programs can provide youth early exposure and development of skills important for a range of careers. Most programs target development of skills that cross-cut disciplines (e.g., teamwork, communication) as well as more specialized skills (e.g., social science research, software development).¹⁴ Finally, one study found youth who reported quality supervisory support during their work experience also showed increased perceptions of being respected in one’s community.¹⁰

ABCD is a potential approach to providing youth with quality work experience that develops important competencies related to essential public health services such as assessing community needs and resources. A recent review found three projects wherein high school youth were actively engaged in ABCD approaches.¹⁶ These projects engaged youth in defining core features of the community they valued as assets^17–19 in addition to activities such as developing writing skills²⁰ or planning a community project (cleaning a park, carnival event for children).²¹ Similarly, within public health, a few programs have employed youth in asset mapping.^22–25 However, publications of these efforts typically present process descriptions or asset mapping outputs while the influence on youth themselves is not evaluated. Furthermore, comparative research of different work experience approaches is needed to understand their respective attributes and potential value to public health workforce and rural community development.

For this paper, our objective was to evaluate the experience of predominantly Black youth who participated in a rural community-based organization’s work experience program. The program included two tracks: 1) Youth Connect - a career exploration track that included work placement within community agencies and 2) MAPSCorps - a track that employs youth to conduct asset mapping for their community.²⁶ In the context of the participant’s work experience, our goal was to answer two research questions: 1) How do youth perceive their development due to participation?, and 2) What are the ways that youth describe how their participation influenced their experience of community? For each question, we aimed to descriptively compare findings between the tracks.

Methods

The prioritized data source for this analysis derived from open-ended qualitative interviews. Survey data were used to supplement these findings. The study was approved by the university institutional review board.

Setting and Participants:

The study was conducted the summer of 2019 in a population center (53.9 thousand people)²⁷ of several rural counties in North Carolina. The study sample consisted of youth residing in these counties who applied to a community-based organization’s summer work experience program and were divided into one of two tracks, Youth Connect and MAPSCorps. The program is advertised via local schools, job fairs, and through word-of-mouth. For our purposes, we considered youth to include high school and college-aged participants, who were 14 to 22 years old. Placement was based on the community-based organization staff’s assessment of “fit” with either track.

Work Experience Tracks:

Drawing from a positive youth development (PYD) framework,^28,29 both tracks of the work experience program were designed to expose youth to work experiences embedded within the rural community. Youth Connect was initiated by the community-based organization in 2012, funded via a municipal operating budget. MAPSCorps was added in 2016 in partnership with academic researchers and supplemented with grant-funding. Youth Connect was focused on developing general skills important across a variety of sectors. MAPSCorps was focused on technology-based community asset mapping and the application of these data for developing public health-related skills. In recognition of the positive role-modeling they could provide to younger participants, college-age alumni of either track of the employment program were recruited to serve as Program Leaders (a role with supervisory, teaching, and facilitating responsibilities) for one of the two tracks. All work experience program participants were employed by the community-based organization for 6 weeks and worked for approximately 25-30 hours per week total. Youth Connect participants were assigned to work 15 hours per week with one of twelve community-based agencies (including non-profit organizations, municipal departments, healthcare/medical practices, restaurants, and daycare centers). In contrast, MAPSCorps participants all reported to one community-based organization with a primary focus on asset mapping. MAPSCorps participants worked in small groups for 12-15 hours per week, physically walking the streets of assigned geographies, entering data and coding information about open and operating businesses or organizations and interviewing individuals at each place to collect information about their products and services. Both tracks also worked 12-15 hours per week on track-specific professional development activities. Youth Connect participants participated in a learning curriculum with a general professional development focus (communication skills, conflict management) not focused on public health. In contrast, the MAPSCorps curriculum was designed to cultivate public health and research skills, primarily by guiding students in hands-on experience related to essential public health services. More specifically, they were guided to pose and answer questions relevant to priorities of the community, using the data they were actively collecting, coding and preparing for analysis.

Study Procedures:

All participants were invited to the study. For participants under 18, parental consent and participant assent were collected. Participants over 18 completed informed consent. Participants were asked to self-complete a pre-survey (10-20 minutes) during orientation sessions. At program conclusion, participants self-completed a post-survey with the same pre-survey and additional post-survey measures (25-30 minutes). They were also asked to complete a 1:1 semi-structured interview with trained interviewers in a private location. Participants received $20 in gift cards.

Qualitative Interviews:

Each interview lasted approximately 30 minutes. Participants were asked to draw maps of their community at pre- and post-period, which was used as an elicitation tool to enable communication, explanations, stories or memories.^30,31 They were probed specifically to reflect on the work experience, perceived impacts, and their perceptions of community and any changes they perceived due to the work experience program. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed for analysis. See supplements for the full interview guide.

Qualitative Data Analysis:

We used a phenomenological approach, described by Creswell as an adaptation from the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen Method originally reported in Moustakas 1994.³² The phenomenological approach provided a foundation to code and interpret the interview data with the purpose of providing an examination of the lived experience of a “phenomenon” (the work experience program) through participant’s personal experiences and personal perception of “objects and events” (their development, their community).

Data analysis was led by a graduate-level student with previous experience in qualitative methods (CS) in collaboration with a team of qualitative researchers (LF and SH) and members of the summer program organizing team (NRE and AK). Throughout analyses, the lead analyst (CS) immersed in the data, coded the data, wrote reflexive memos, and met weekly with other team members to critically question themes and reach consensus. The first two phases of analysis combined participant data from both tracks and the researchers were blinded to participant identifiers (including track). During the first phase, following the principles of phenomenological analysis, significant statements were collected from the interviews without any attempts to organize the information. After collecting statements from half of the interviews, these were re-read and memoed to understand emerging themes, both related to what the experience was and how it was experienced. After applying emergent codes and memoing the second half of the interviews, themes were adjusted and refined based on remaining data. A second phase of analysis involved considering each participant’s individual experience of the program and its influence on their perception of community, followed by a consideration and synthesis of all participants’ descriptions in order to distill major patterns in the “essence” (the essential characteristics that make a phenomenon a phenomenon)³³ of these experiences and perceptions. The final stage of analysis involved revealing participant types (Youth Connect student, MAPSCorps student and Program Leaders) and comparing/contrasting themes. Community stakeholders were consulted to verify final themes and findings.

Survey Measures:

On the post survey, we used several one-item questions to assess perceived changes in social connections, goal setting, and team work adapted from Youth Life Skills Evaluation surveys (Table 3).³⁴ We also adapted and included a validated measure of research self-efficacy (6-items) and research experience (4-items) on the pre- and post-surveys.³⁵ Research self-efficacy assessed perceived ability to conduct research (e.g., “I can develop a research tool …”). Research experience assessed practical application of research activities (e.g., “I have made a research presentation…”). All items had response options of 1 = ‘very untrue of me’ to 4 = ‘very true of me’.

Table 3.

End of Program Survey

	MAPSCorps *	YouthConnect	Program Leaders
“I have improved my connections to other youth”
Very/Somewhat Untrue of Me	3 (25%)	2 (22%)	0
Very/Somewhat True of Me	9 (75%)	7 (77%)	6 (100%)
“I can work well with a group of students to organize a program or event”
Very/Somewhat Untrue of Med	1 (8%)	0	0
Very/Somewhat True of Med	11 (92%)	9 (100%)	6 (100%)
“I have outlined goals for my academic year that will move me towards my … personal/career goals”
Very/Somewhat Untrue of Me	2 (17%)	1 (11%)	0
Very/Somewhat True of Me	10 (83%)	8 (89%)	6 (100%)
“What are your plans after High School?”
Attend 2-4 year College	9 (75%)	9 (100%)	5 (83%)
Find a Job/Other	3 (25%)	0	1 (17%)
“Are you considering a career in a STEM Field?”
Yes	8 (67%)	7 (78%)	5 (83%)
No	4 (33%)	2 (22%)	1 (17%)
“To what extent do you feel a sense of accomplishment with helping your community?”
Never	5 (42%)	5 (56%)	1 (17%)
Sometimes/Often/Always	7 (58%)	4 (44%)	5 (83%)

^*One MAPSCorps participant did not complete the post survey

Survey Analyses

Descriptive analysis was used to summarize survey measures.

Results

We interviewed 28 of 31 program participants: nine were Youth Connect (75% participation), thirteen were MAPSCorps (100% participation), and six were Program Leader participants (100% participation). All but two participants self-identified as Black, two thirds identified as female (67%) and Program Leaders were older than youth participants in both tracks (Table 1).

Table 1.

Demographic characteristics of study participants

Characteristic	MAPSCorps N (%)	Youth Connect N (%)	Program Leaders N (%)
Gender
Male	8 (61.5%)	2 (20.0%)	--
Female	5 (38.5%)	7 (80.0%)	6 (100%)
Age (Mean, SD)	15.7 years* (range 14-19)	17.4 years (range 14-19)	18.8 years (range 17-22)
Race/Ethnicity
Black/African American	11 (84.6%)	9 (100%)	6 (100%)
Hispanic/Latinx	2 (15.4%)	--	--

^*Age data was missing for one participant

How do youth perceive their development due to participation?

Three domains emerged from interview data that were similar across the three groups. Specifically, participants described gains in 1) personal and professional skills, 2) sense of community, and 3) civic engagement (Table 2). The post-survey results supported the qualitative themes. Consistent with the perception of gains in personal and professional development skills, most participants indicated improvements in their ability to work in teams (n=26), outline goals (n=24), and connect with other students (n=22) (Table 3).

Table 2.

Major themes from interviews of participant-reported domains of growth

Domain of growth	Description	Specific youth-reported examples related to the domain	Exemplar quotes
Domains reported by MAPSCorps participants only
Spatial and observational awareness	MAPSCorps participants described an expanded view of their community due to the asset mapping activities (i.e., walking through the community, block-by-block, and collecting information from community members present at a given asset they were logging). Through this activity, they described learning about businesses they did not know existed, that their community was larger than they previously thought, and that there were more resources and interesting things to do in their community than they previously knew.	• Realization that community had more assets than they previously recognized • Learning about new places • Learning about connections between past and present • Becoming more aware of surroundings	Participant 7: I learned that a lot of places were there that I didn’t know. I know a lot of people in the city kind of complain there’s nothing to do. But I feel like now that I’ve experienced it, I want to encourage more people to get out and see it for themselves.
Personal health and wellness	MAPSCorps participants described how walking not only helped them understand community assets, but also helped promote their wellness. Whether describing walking as a new form of daily exercise or the mental benefits that came from slowing down and taking in their community by foot, youth reported that these activities contributed to personal wellness. This theme was associated with new behaviors that expanded beyond the confines of the summer program.	• Increased physical activity through walking • Finding walking to be a peaceful activity while mapping • Participation in structured group exercise	Okay. Is there anything about being part of MAPSCorps that made you draw this differently? Participant 13: Yeah, walking. Interviewer 3: Tell me more. What about the walking? Participant 13: It’s an every day exercise. That’s one reason. I could see what’s really out here. If I didn’t have a ride, I just walked. Interviewer: So you’re saying walking helped you see what your area is like more? Participant 13: Mm-hmm. Participant 12: “Because I walk a lot with MAPSCorps, I was like okay, I want to walk more at home too. Which I was already doing, but I used to drive to the park, and this time I just decided to walk. So I found this little trail right behind the school that’s there. So there’s a park here, but there’s also a little tiny trail thing too.”
Domains reported by participants in both tracks
Personal and professional development	Participants in both tracks and Program Leaders described many ways in which their participation helped them develop skills important to their personal and professional futures. Reported skills included growth in active listening, leadership, and communication. Youth also described learning information that helped them with their academic and professional journeys, such as preparing college applications, learning about how to be on time for work, and diffusing difficult interpersonal situations.	• Networking skills • Getting and keeping jobs • Saving money • Information about college and setting goals • Leadership and public speaking skills	Participant 8: “This is a really good opportunity for people my age to experience. For most people, it is their first job, and it really prepares you in the future, knowing how to talk to people, knowing how to get things done. So that’s really a very good thing.” Participant 27: “Youth Connect helped me a lot. They showed me how to save money. …I don’t know how to save money.” Participant 17: “The Scientific Symposium* helped a lot. I had never been to one before, I didn’t even know what a Symposium was. It helped me learn how to do research in the community, and also helped me learn how to communicate with the community.”
Experience of community	Participants in both tracks and Program Leaders described deepened relationships with peers and a feeling of belonging within the community as a result of participation. Even some participants who initially had dubious expectations reported appreciation for the opportunity.	• Feeling close to others • Making good friends • Seeing connections between people, • Describing feelings of being part of a community	Participant 2: ‘Cause you really opened up. It’s kind of like a family, Youth Connect. It’s kind of like…I can’t really explain it.’ Participant 8: “MAPSCorps is a very good program. When I first came, I didn’t know that I would be doing all of that. I thought I wouldn’t like it because of the heat. But when I went out mapping in the morning, it was very good. I grew bonds with friends that were in the program, so it made it better, so I wasn’t always focusing on how hot it was.” Participant 26: “[Youth Connect] made me get close to the people in my community because you know, it’s the public. And you got to work with the people… It made me closer to people in the community.”
Civic engagement	Participants in both tracks and Program Leaders described growth in understanding ways to be involved in the community and actual steps taken to positively influence their community. For example, participants learned about ways to present at town meetings, developed connections with adults they perceived as influential in the community, and described new exposure to other civically-engaged people in their community. They also described a desire to be more connected and harmonious with their neighbors. Some youth explained how because of the summer work experience, they made deliberate decisions to become more involved in events or opportunities related to their town’s flourishing.	• Getting involved with the community • Deciding to volunteer • Believing they could make a difference in their community	Participant 25: [Because of participating in this program] Even little things, like going to meetings, going to city councils, you know, voting for mayor. I get to vote this year. Finally, I’m ready. … job fairs. I went to my first job fair. … last year I even did early voters’ registration for… young people. Interviewer: You were a volunteer? Participant 25: Yeah…. I just been volunteering. Like right now I’m at the Boys and Girls Club, basically volunteering. Participant 1: “It kind of makes me feel like I need to be more connected with the people that I live with. The kids that I work with, when we go to the daycare, all of us are from different spots but for some reason we all connect to each other and we all get along. So I figure, if I can connect with them, and I only see them a little bit every day, then I should be able to live with everyone in my neighborhood and get along with them. So it makes me think that I should, you should probably cherish your community more than most people do. Because everybody’s community is different, but everybody’s community is worth something.”

^*The Scientific Symposium is a MAPSCorps-specific culminating event where participants provide poster and oral presentations to community members about their asset mapping research project

Two additional domains emerged from the MAPSCorps participant interview data: 1) increased spatial or observational awareness – an expanded view and realization of community resources and 2) improvements in personal health and wellness – obtaining more physical activity and mental wellbeing. Participants attributed development in both domains to the act of physically walking through the community and collecting information about community assets (Table 2). Analysis of pre- to post-survey data also revealed some descriptive differences in the development of research skills between tracks (Figure 1). Specifically, Youth Connect participants had little change in these measures (<0.25 points gained/lost); whereas, MAPSCorps participants had an average increase of 2.7 and 2.3 points in research self-efficacy and experience, respectively.

Figure 1.

Changes in research self-efficacy and experience measures for MAPSCorps, Youth Connect, and Program Leader participants

Note: Full data in tabular format provided in Supplements

What are the ways that youth describe how their participation influenced their experience of community?

Four patterns emerged from the interview data regarding the essence of how youth described their participation influenced their experience of community (Figure 2). These four patterns represented a range of experiences including participants who described: 1) very little about their community and focused on skill development (Skill Developers), 2) co-occurring appreciation and criticism of their community (Community Questioners), 3) positive observations of, but limited discussion about involvement in, their community (Community Observers), and 4) positive perceptions of community and an active desire to contribute to it (Community Enthusiasts).

Figure 2.

Descriptions, example quotes, and participant distribution in the four emergent patterns

All Skill Developers were Youth Connect and all Community Observers were MAPSCorps participants. Community Enthusiasts and Questioners included participants in both tracks. All Program Leaders were Community Enthusiasts. Consistent with the predominance of Program Leaders within the Community Enthusiasts profile, post-survey results indicated all but one had a sense of accomplishment with helping their community at least sometimes. Compared to Program Leaders, more MAPSCorps (n=5) and Youth Connect (n=5) participants indicated they never had a sense of accomplishment with helping the community (Table 3).

Discussion

Our findings suggest that both work experience tracks were perceived as quality work experiences that enhanced the development of skills relevant to public health workforce and community development. The perceived benefits included both concrete impacts (e.g., communication, research skills) as well as more perceptual impacts (e.g., observation of community resources). These benefits are important for professional growth and development of a sense of community, which also have potential to influence career and mobility decisions for rural youth of color. However, there was heterogeneity among the participants that indicated different mechanisms of influence across the program tracks and are important considerations for future program development and research.

Overall, youth in these work experience tracks perceived positive outcomes. This is likely due to curricular components in both tracks that align with components of PYD programs that are known to improve academic and developmental outcomes.^36,37 For example, activities to build self-efficacy, foster healthy relationships, and expand opportunities and recognition for youth are embedded in both MAPSCorps and Youth Connect. Importantly, MAPSCorps and Youth Connect were explicitly focused on providing paid work experience, while PYD programs are often volunteer-based or after school programs where youth are not compensated.³⁸ Our findings indicate that it is possible to effectively provide PYD components within paid work experience, which is especially important for Black youth who are burdened with higher unemployment and wage inequities, beginning in adolescence.³⁹ Compared to their White counterparts, Black youth are less likely to have paid jobs, which can be an important resume builder and impact upward socioeconomic mobility.³⁹ MAPSCorps, Youth Connect, and similar work experience programs could potentially play a role in alleviating economic racial inequities.

Our study expands the limited scholarship on how Black youth from rural areas perceive their communities. Specifically, we found participants felt that the work experience programs fostered interpersonal connections and a sense of community. Prior studies have found that rural youth who scored higher on measures of ‘sense of community’ had stronger intentions to remain in their community, in turn potentially reducing the risk of brain drain.^40–43 Thus, our findings suggest that community-based work experience programs may help promote youth’s development of connections to their community, which could impact youth’s intention to remain. However, other factors such as perceived opportunity also influence youths’ mobility decisions. For example, a study in rural Texas found many youth had positive views of and desired to stay in their community, but perceptions of limited work opportunities were instrumental factors for intentions to leave.⁴⁰ In our comparisons across tracks, active observation of community assets was more prominent among the asset mapping track (MAPSCorps). This is likely due to the MAPSCorps main compensated activity - cataloging community assets. In contrast, Youth Connect participants were paired with one discrete agency in the community. Our findings suggest that work experience approaches such as MAPSCorps that draw heavily from ABCD and include asset mapping make youth more aware of local resources available to members of their rural community. Further, the asset mapping skills and knowledge they gained align with public health core competencies for planning and management to promote health⁴⁴ and potentially situate the youth to be future public health professionals in their community. However, more research is needed to assess if youth perceive these local resources as desirable for future career opportunities or influence their intentions to stay. Future efforts could also consider using the catalogue of assets to create an inventory of agencies that support public health and social service career opportunities.

Indicative of the asset mapping process, there were additional notable outcomes with public health workforce development implications among MAPSCorps participants. Interestingly, MAPSCorps participants noted a benefit regarding their physical and mental wellness mainly due to the activity of walking through neighborhoods to catalogue assets. The MAPSCorps program provides an interesting strategy to foster physical and mental wellness, which is relevant for rural communities and people of color who are inequitably burdened with chronic disease related to issues of stress, inactivity, and systematic racism.^45,46 Furthermore, related to public health workforce competencies of data analysis, interpretation and communication, MAPSCorps participants had increases in research self-efficacy and experience, which is likely due to the curricula component that guided them in analyzing and presenting asset data to community leaders at a culminating symposium. MAPSCorps’s approach, inspired by ABCD, is an innovative way to expose young people to public health practice in their own community.

Our study has limitations. The sample of predominately Black rural youth lends itself to rich qualitative findings, but additional research is needed to assess whether the results transfer to other groups and regions. We had a small sample size and participants were not independent, which limited our ability to assess for statistical differences. Also, one organization operated both tracks, track placement was not random, and participants likely knew and discussed experiences with each other, all of which dilute findings. Finally, participants may not have felt comfortable making negative statements about their experiences. Despite these limitations, our study is one of few that has evaluated a work experience program in a rural community from the perspective of youth of color.

Our study has potential implications for future youth work experience programs in rural communities within and outside of public health. Programs could more intentionally nurture youth in their development with consideration of the four patterns of community perceptions we identified (Community Questioners, Observers, and Enthusiasts and Skill Developers). For example, Questioners appeared to be naturally inclined to see weaknesses or problems. Youth with such views may benefit from structured guidance to critically assess the mechanisms underlying problems, develop solutions, and advocate for change. Skill Developers were gaining skills that could translate to varying fields, which should be encouraged since it is unrealistic to expect all youth to desire public health careers or to remain in their communities. However, we also found subsets of youth who were observing more positive aspects of their community (Community Observers) and some who were especially motivated to get involved (Community Enthusiasts). Many Community Enthusiasts were Program Leaders who had participated in the program in prior summers, suggesting a potential inclination among this group to community service professions such as public health. Workplace exposure is considered a key feature of programs to improve diversity.⁴⁷ Thus, work experience programs may benefit Black youth who align with the Community Observer or Enthusiast profiles by exposing them early to public health work and increasing their interest in these professions.

Public health has prioritized the creation of a more diverse workforce “able to serve diverse populations, because of cultural, environmental, and other considerations.”^1,2 Programs such as MAPSCorps and Youth Connect are a potential entry point for building this diversity. The “MPH degree has been the de facto entry degree into the [public health] field”,² and youth work experience programs could be conceptualized as pipeline programs into undergraduate and graduate-level degrees. Among what few such pipeline programs exist, many are situated at academic centers. Our study indicates these programs may be successfully integrated into rural communities, using approaches that can enhance both youth and community development.

Future research is needed to support youth work experience programs for the development of the public health workforce, especially for rural communities and people of color. Overall, research in public health workforce development is limited, and few if any longitudinal studies of development and/or pipeline programs exist. Longitudinal studies to track long-term outcomes would be valuable to understand the trajectories of youth who participate. For example, anecdotally, the community-based organizations involved in this study were willing and interested in hiring youth for future career opportunities, which would be an important outcome to track. Quasi-experimental and mixed methods studies are likely the optimal design given the pragmatic nature of work experience programs.

In summary, our study found that work experience programs such as MAPSCorps and Youth Connect are quality experiences from the perspective of youth. Although our study focused on predominantly Black youth, youth across all races and ethnicities, especially those from historically excluded communities, would likely benefit from such programs. These programs present new opportunities to foster development of the next generation of public health and rural community development professionals. Importantly, exposing youth of color to these fields may help advance diversity in the future workforce.

Implications for Policy and Practice.

• It may be useful for work experience programs in public health to tailor strategies based on the identified patterns of community perceptions in order to strengthen engagement and foster youth’s personal and career development. Youth who align with the community observer and enthusiast patterns may be especially well-suited for considering public health-related careers.

• Work experience programs for youth of color could fill important racial equity gaps and serve as an extended pipeline into the undergraduate and graduate public health degrees.

• Alternative to pipeline programs that are often placed near academic centers, more efforts should consider building on rural community’s strengths and placing youth work experience programs directly in their communities where it can serve both youth and rural community development.