In recognition of the global need for food focused media literacy skills in adolescents, our team developed a step-by-step guide to streamline the cultural adaptation of prevention programs through digitization and use of a novel application of storyboarding methodology, called “blueprint storyboarding.” This innovative approach to cultural adaptation is designed to increase systematicity through manualization, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and adaptability for multiple cultures and developmental stages. The blueprint storyboarding process begins with storyboarding program content and then marking the culture-specific elements needing cultural tailoring versus the universal elements of the intervention that require no cultural adaptation. We used this template to carry out adaptations to two different cultural groups: Somali American and Jamaican American adolescents. We sought community feedback for refinement of each cultural adaptation to ensure cultural relevance and specificity.
The step-by-step blueprint storyboard guide for digitization and cultural adaptation and an illustration of how we used this process to cultural adapt JMGC can be found in this paper in Prevention Science.
This cultural adaptation is being led by NSF Research Fellow and PhD student Tori Simenec with input from Sarah Gillespie (NSF PhD Research Fellow), Hopewell Hodges (PhD student & former Graduate RA), Salma Ibrahim (undergrad RA), and Dr. Ferguson (PI).
Learn more about the digital program and the adaptation process by watching this video presented at the “World’s Challenge Challenge” competition 2021: