The Wake County Mental Health Association (MHA) is a the local affiliate of the National Mental Health Association (NMHA), an organization that works to improve the mental health of all Americans, especially the 54 million individuals with mental disorders, through advocacy, education, research and service. The Wake County MHA invited a team of six students from the UNC School of Public Health in Chapel Hill, NC to conduct an Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis (AOCD) to investigate the underlying factors that contribute to the well-being of middle school students in Raleigh. This approach was chosen to meet the needs of a broad range of stakeholders with an interest in the well-being of middle school youth in Raleigh—for example, while the MHA was interested in gaining insight into mental wellness services and programs desired by students and parents, our team also investigated the broader challenges related to general youth well being (i.e., parent-teen communication and peer pressure), in order to inform the efforts of a more diverse range of community organizations in Raleigh. The goal of an AOCD project is to investigate the strengths and challenges of a particular community by immersing oneself in the community and by speaking with key informants both inside the community (i.e., parents and students) and outside, yet linked to the community (i.e., service providers). The AOCD process culminates with a community forum in which community members and service providers discuss the project findings in order to develop action steps which address challenges. The forum also provides the team a formal venue in which to turn ownership of the project over to the community. Accordingly, with support and guidance from two MHA-affiliated community preceptors and a teaching team comprised of UNC faculty, our team entered the middle school community in October 2004, and held a community forum at Carnage Middle School in April 2005. Our team identified the strengths and challenges of middle school students by conducting interviews and focus groups with three sets of key informants—service providers, parents, and middle school students. Overall the team conducted a total of 18 interviews and 9 focus groups, making contact with a total of 60 individuals. Following a thorough review and comprehensive analysis of all interview transcripts, our team identified 13 key strengths and challenges of middle school students in Raleigh. Community members and service providers on a planning committee narrowed those themes down to the six issues they viewed as most important and most changeable. These included (1) mentoring and positive role models, (2) engaging in after school programs, (3) positive and negative peer pressure, (4) communication between teens and adults, (5) access to information about sex, and (6) parental involvement. Guided by a community-based planning committee, our team organized a community forum entitled “Celebrating the Middle School Community,” held on April 26th from 5:30 – 8:00 pm at Carnage Middle School in southeast Raleigh. Sixty-eight community members and service providers attended the forum. Following the introduction of the AOCD process and findings, attendees joined small group discussions surrounding each theme, which generated action steps for future initiatives. The main body of this document identifies all action steps and related discussion in great detail. This AOCD document is intended to serve as a resource to stakeholders in Raleigh’s middle school community, including students, parents, and service providers. It is our team’s hope that the resources presented within will contribute to the existing knowledge that impacts the well being of middle school youth, through both formal and informal structures in the community. It has been the team’s privilege to interact with so many impressive youth, parents, and service providers in Raleigh, and to observe first hand their commitment and passion for promoting environments in which youth can thrive through the middle school years. We hope that those who are interested in addressing some of the challenges that impede youth well being will find this document a useful starting point and a catalyst for new action.Master of Public Healt
