The Massachusetts Photovoice Project is an innovative, youth-centered approach to preventing or reducing underage gambling among youth. Photovoice is a participatory approach of storytelling and documenting environmental community conditions using photography. Local youth engage in Photovoice to explore a community issue that is important to them. They then generate a “call to action” for community members.

Through this process, participating youth gain knowledge and skills that empower them to understand, critically assess, and communicate those factors that place them and people in their communities at risk for underage and problem gambling. This approach places youth—particularly those who experience disparities and inequitable balances of power—at the center of community change.

Within the first year of the initiative, the project results included the following:

• 47 youth, 68 caregivers, and over 6,000 community members were reached.
• Early evidence suggests that the project positively affected the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that serve as precursors to longer-term community-level change on the ultimate outcomes of interest, thereby increasing protective factors for problem gambling.
• The project is poised to have a positive impact and become a replicable model for other states.