Customized for Your Clinic
A facilitated, comprehensive self-assessment and guided Plan/Do/Study/Act improvement process that includes customized resources and coaching.
Adolescents experience unique health care needs that often go unmet. At AHI, we know that health centers face many competing demands to provide excellent care to all of their patients. We also know that health centers can play a key role in meeting the needs of adolescent patients and empowering them to establish lifelong healthy behaviors. Our ACE-AP removes barriers to change and streamlines implementation to improve care delivery to adolescents.
Download a PDF overview of the ACE-AP.
Interested in other ways to improve your clinic? Check out our Virtual Clinic Tour.
Learn more about the ACE-AP.
The ACE-AP is a facilitated, comprehensive self-assessment and guided improvement process that includes customized resources, recommendations, technical assistance, and implementation plans using Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) improvement cycles. We developed the ACE-AP in partnership with a multidisciplinary team of health professionals and Teen Advisory Council members.
AHI can facilitate the ACE-AP in-person or virtually. We will guide your site through a self-assessment of your organization’s environment, policies, and practices related to youth-friendly services. The ACE-AP addresses the following 12 key areas of adolescent-centered care:
- Respectful Treatment
- Reproductive and Sexual Health Clinical Practices
- Parent Engagement
- Nutritional Health Clinical Practices
- Cultural Responsiveness
- Confidentiality
- Community Engagement and Outreach
- Best Practices and Standards of Care
- Behavioral Health Clinical Practices
- Adolescent Involvement and Empowerment
- Adolescent Appropriate Environment
- Access to Care
Interested in assessing the adolescent-friendliness of your health space? Here are the clinical settings the ACE-AP is designed for:
- Primary Care: including but not limited to pediatrics, family medicine, teen clinics, FQHCs, family planning, and sexual and reproductive health clinics
- Behavioral Health: including but not limited to community mental health programs, non-profit mental health groups, private practice, and hospital-affiliated mental health outpatient services
- School-Based Health Centers: Middle and high school school-based health centers
We have benefited greatly from working with the Adolescent Health Initiative. Our health center recently received the Silver-Level Adolescent-Centered Environment Certification. Our representative from the Adolescent Health Initiative walked us through the entire process, helping us to meet our goals. Their blueprint for the process is easy to follow, and the resources they provide are tremendously helpful.
I would recommend any youth health agency to consider working with Adolescent Health Initiative to achieve their Adolescent-Centered Environment certification. The process provided us an excellent opportunity to look objectively at changes we need to make to improve while also recognizing where we were excelling.
