Youth Research Cohort- Participate in Youth Research Cohort Planning
The World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program contracted with RAND, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization, to serve as an independent collaborator to:
- Collect, organize, and summarize the public input needed for the Program to develop the World Trade Center Youth Research Cohort (WTC-YRC); and
- Coordinate the Program’s efforts to gain community participation throughout the process.
This participatory process will be open to all community members with an interest in 9/11 youth research including survivors, survivor advocates, researchers, and clinicians and other health and social service providers. RAND researchers have expertise in various engagement approaches and have created methods and tools to facilitate engagement and consensus-building.
RAND’s goal in this process is to include and to elevate the voices of all community members for the Program’s development of a plan for the WTC-YRC.
To accomplish this goal:
- RAND will be open and transparent and provide several opportunities for community members to participate and give input throughout the participatory process.
- This approach includes three stages for community involvement:
- an on-ramp stage to introduce the public to the WTC-YRC development process and answer questions;
- a development stage where community members learn about important aspects of research cohort design and provide feedback on preferred priorities and approaches for WTC-YRC design elements;
- and a deliberation stage, where RAND will synthesize community responses into a set of options for WTC-YRC design and engage with community members to prioritize preferred options.