This article focuses on community participation, a movement in the public health field
that respects the rights and responsibility of community members—including youth—to diagnose the causes of a community problem and to actively engage in designing, implementing, and
evaluating strategies to address the problem. Community participation can be a vital strategy that
helps shift the ways in which communities deal with adolescents and their sexual health as
community adults partner with young people and with program planners to create appropriate
solutions to community problems. For example, when planning a program to prevent sexually
transmitted infections (STIs) in adolescents, youth and others in the community partner with
program planners to identify the causes and extent of the problem. Together, they design and
implement strategies to reduce adolescent STI rates in the community.