Youth/Adult Collaborations: Fostering Resiliency by Involving Youth

Involving youth in community health initiatives is a key element to successfully reaching adolescents with public health messages. Adults supporting youth in youth peer educator programs and other youth focused programs work collaboratively with youth to prevent disease and promote community health through youth-to-youth and intergenerational education, advocacy, and participation in community events. Viewing youth as resources and creating a protective environment to foster resiliency are essential to keeping youth involved is a youth development approach. Some of the challenges facing adults are recruiting youth, advocating for youth within the agency, training other adults to work with youth, crisis intervention and building relationships with diverse young people. Youth workers (a sub-set of Community Health Workers) are the adults advocating for youth and facing these challenges. They need training in setting personal boundaries, intervention and referral techniques, youth supervision, program evaluation, training skills, group facilitation, team building and cultural competence. Working with programs in many communities, schools and residential settings for the past 15 years the authors have developed strategies to support successful youth/adult collaborations. This presentation will review mechanisms for involving youth in community health initiatives, especially ones targeted for youth.