Alliance for Girls Mental Health & Safety Study

is led by youth researchers to examine how their peers understand and experience mental health, and how their sense of safety affects their wellbeing. Learn more about the study.

PROJECT UPDATES

From March to May 2026, we’re hosting youth storytelling sessions and disseminating an anonymous survey to youth across the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn how you can be a community partner by either helping us spread the word or hosting a storytelling circle in your area!

Learn how you can contribute to the study as a community partner

Thumbnail of the slide deck: Mental Health, Safety & Well-Being for Girls and Gender-Expansive Youth of Color in the Bay Area: Participant Briefing. To the right of the title are 3 girls and gender-expansive youth of color wearing pastel clothes

Learn how you can participate in the study as a young person

OUR RESEARCH Team

is comprised of girls, gender-expansive people, and women of color from the Bay Area who actively challenge power imbalances. Youth are not just participants but co-designers, partners, and decision-makers.

  • Headshot of Alyvia

    Alyvia Deangelo

    YOUTH RESEARCHER

  • Headshot of CX

    Chuan Xin Loh

    YOUTH RESEARCHER

  • Headshot of Lupita

    Coatlupe Martínez

    YOUTH RESEARCHER

  • Headshot of Gracy

    Gracy Vaca Mora

    YOUTH RESEARCHER

  • Headshot Irina Nùñez

    Irina Nùñez

    DIRECTOR OF PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH

  • Headshot of Joanna

    Joanna Núñez

    PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

  • Headshot of Priyanka

    Priyanka Kalidindi

    YOUTH RESEARCHER

  • Headshot of Susanna

    Susanna Chen

    YOUTH RESEARCHER

The Study

is a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project led by girls and gender-expansive youth of color (ages 14–24) in the Bay Area. The project explores how young people understand and experience mental health; and how their sense of physical, emotional, and spiritual safety affects their well-being.

Youth co-researchers are guiding every stage of the process—from shaping the research questions to collecting, analyzing, and sharing the findings.

The goal is to ensure that the voices of girls and gender-expansive youth of color are centered and that the resulting insights lead to real, community-driven solutions that improve safety and mental health support for youth.

Research Values

  • We are responsible for participants' privacy, dignity, and agency within this study. Honoring vulnerability means ensuring that sharing leads to collective impact, not harm.

  • We welcome many forms of knowledge—ancestral, spiritual, embodied, and academic. We commit to slowing down, asking what terms and ideas mean to different people in our community, and honoring the values they hold.

  • As youth researchers, we commit to radical honesty—with each other and with participants—while practicing care, gentleness, and consent in our communication.

  • Our curiosity is not about surveillance or extraction; it is about deep listening, wonder, and a desire to understand people’s truths on their own terms.

  • Our collective strength comes from reciprocity and care. We step in when others cannot, and we trust our peers to hold us when we need rest. Interdependence is a practice of solidarity, not charity.

Contact uS

For questions or to learn more about the study, please contact AFG’s Director of Participatory Research, Irina Nuñez, at irina@alliance4girls.org.

“I wanted to join YPAR because... in [this BIPOC] community, there's a lot of stigma around mental health, and it makes it a lot harder for people to open up or ask for help. And I wanted to break that stigma.”

— YPAR Team Member