Empowering Youth in Health Care
Health care professionals can implement programs and practices to develop adolescents into knowledgeable and engaged health care consumers.
Empowering youth to actively participate in their health care leads to more preventive visits and lifelong engagement in their health and well-being. Health care professionals can implement programs and practices to develop adolescents into knowledgeable and engaged health care consumers. Additionally, health care professionals can improve the quality of their care by centering the values and opinions of the young people they serve. The following resources can help you along the way.
When youth and adults team up to facilitate a training or presentation on an adolescent-related topic, it can benefit everyone involved. Young people bring theory to life by sharing their lived experiences, priorities and perspectives. The opportunity to recognize and share their expertise can be a great professional development opportunity for youth, and for their adult partners as well.
Since our first conference in 2013, AHI has been connecting youth and adult facilitators to help them present on adolescent health-related topics, and we’ve learned some things along the way! Our staff and youth council members co-created three modules to help youth and adults co-facilitate in meaningful ways. The modules can be used together, or as standalone resources. Each resource includes activities and strategies to support a model of shared power in planning and facilitation.
Young people may avoid accessing the services they need for various reasons, which may include concerns about confidentiality, fear of judgment, and inconvenient hours and location. Youth-serving organizations must take young people's unique needs and concerns seriously and implement changes to make their organizations more youth-friendly. This Starter Guide provides ways your organization’s policies, practices and environment can become more youth-friendly.
Sparks are designed for providers or staff to deliver in 15-30 minutes at staff meetings or professional development opportunities. These trainings will “spark” discussion and reflection among your multidisciplinary team. All sparks include a PowerPoint presentation, a facilitator outline and follow-up materials.
Explore the ways Title X clinic staff can create a nonjudgmental culture for adolescent and young adult clients who present for pregnancy options counseling.
Youth empowerment can be impacted through programming, visual cues and one-on-one conversations with patients. AHI offers resources on all three!
Hear directly from teens about how you can improve their health care experience.
Are you interested in empowering youth to be savvy health care consumers? Would you like to learn strategies to get authentic youth feedback on your adolescent services?
