The Youth HIV Policy Advisors (YHPA) program was created in 2015 to complement HIV policy advocacy efforts at the Equality Foundation of Georgia in Atlanta, increase meaningful youth involvement in HIV policy advocacy, and engage more directly with policymakers. The YHPA program model is: 1. Recruit and provide paid training for HIV+ youth on local, state and federal policymaking; 2. Guide youth participants through the creation of a policy agenda that addresses HIV and its social determinants; 3. Pair youth one-on-one with leaders at multiple levels of government to serve as their Special Advisors on HIV; and 4. Prepare youth to present their work to elected officials, the community and the media. YHPA program inclusion criteria are: participants must be under 30, reside in Metro Atlanta, be HIV positive and willing to discuss their positive HIV status publicly. Of all 23 participants retained for the duration of the program in years 1 and 2, 19 identify as men, 3 as cisgender women, 1 as a transgender woman; 20 identify as African-American, 1 as White (non-Hispanic), 1 as Hispanic and 1 as Bi-racial; 20 identify as gay, bisexual or queer and 3 as straight. The lower limit of participants’ ages was 17. Participants were recruited through partnerships with HIV support groups and the local Ryan White-funded youth and family HIV clinic and through posts on HIV-relevant social media groups. In year 1 (2015), we recruited 22 participants and retained 11 who were matched one-on-one with Metro Atlanta lawmakers to serve as their Special Advisors on HIV. In year 2 (2016), we recruited 19 participants and retained 12 who will serve as Special Advisors through April of 2017. After year 1, as a result of surveys and interviews conducted with youth and informal conversations with elected officials, lessons learned were applied to the year 2 program. These included 1. Intentional over-recruitment of participants and strengthened partnerships with social services organizations helped account for retention issues related to structural barriers like homelessness and employment uncertainty; 2. Matching youth with their own elected representatives increased policymakers’ willingness to develop longer-term working relationships with youth; and 3. The program’s flexibility is essential for it to be truly youth-led. Each cohort has unique strengths and areas of policy interest. Each cohort decided how they would present their policy agenda and facilitators ensured that all training modules were as interactive and “hands on” as possible. Participants from both Year 1 and 2 cohorts remain engaged in Metro Atlanta HIV policy advocacy. Several alumni of the past two years of the program have attained leadership positions in the field of HIV, and the alumni’s policy recommendations have been adopted into the local Ryan White planning council and county HIV/AIDS task force strategies. Recruitment for Year 3 begins in May 2017 and will be accompanied by a systematic evaluation of outcomes related to HIV and policy knowledge among youth, HIV knowledge and related policy action among lawmakers. This presentation will include lessons collected through October 2017.

The theme of “meaningful youth involvement” has been the focus of theory, research and practice in health programs for some time. This presentation will offer perspectives gathered directly from teens ages 14-23 on what sexuality and sexuality education mean to them. Specifically, the methodology will include generating responses from current members of a Teen Action Group (TAG) ages 14-18; and from alumni and alumnae who were TAG members over the past five years (ranging in age up to 23). There are 20 high school students in the 2016-2017 cohort of TAG from 7 Metro Atlanta, public and private high schools. Each TAG member was trained using the standard version of the Making Proud Choices evidence based curriculum created by ETR . Further training and professional development occurred at the monthly TAG meetings. Topics of these meetings are chosen by the TAG members. Teens are expected to facilitate a session that addresses an area of sexual and reproductive health at their school and/or a community based organization. Additionally, teens are expected and equipped to have 40 informal, impromptu conversations with their peers about sexual health. The TAG program collaborates with other organizations in Atlanta to aid TAG members at connecting reproductive health to other social justice movements. The qualitative data will be collected through a combination of focus group discussions, survey questionnaires, and individual interviews. An effort will be made to compare the views of the current, younger teens with those of the older youth. The results will represent how these young people conceptualize sex education based on their own personal experiences and those of people in their communities. This conceptualization will offer a contrast to the ways in which adult public health professionals look at sex education and sexuality. The type of issues to be addressed include: why sex education is important as a preventive tool, and how it is helpful to these individuals and their peers. For these young people, sex education is not just putting on a condom or getting tested; it encompasses ways in which people are in relationship with each other, respecting fluid identities and a diversity of sexual practices, and offering one's lived experience as a model to help other people. The group of youth involved are extremely diverse, in terms of race, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and other demographic characteristics, so the views expressed are expected to be wide-ranging. This presentation is expected to be presented by one of the TAG members who will offer an authentic youth voice to the APHA program.

The need to reach teens where they are – geographically and online – is pressing in public health, in order to ensure that youth are accessing correct information and can identify appropriate services. VOX Teen Communications is a youth development organization that publishes digital content (on VOXATL.com) and a print newspaper written by teens. In April-June 2016, VOX conducted an online survey of youth ages 13-19 called the Atlanta Teen Survey. The methodology was an online self-administered anonymous SurveyMonkey. The survey recipients were drawn from students attending public, private and alternative schools in Atlanta as well as other teen serving organizations in Atlanta. It represented a geographic sample encompassing the five-county region of Clayton, Cobb, Dekalb, Fulton & Gwinnett, and covered a diverse range of racial backgrounds and socio-economic conditions. Individuals (teens and adults) associated with VOX also shared the invitation within their networks. The Teen Survey is designed to help educators, lawmakers, policy advocates, funders and youth-service leaders better understand teen behavior and make informed decisions to effectively support their well-being, learning, civic engagement and healthy behaviors. -Internally at VOX, the survey responded to a need to understand how teens relate to and interact with media and technology, where they are and how they spend time outside of school, as well as the issues they care deeply about. -Externally, developing a survey directly sent to teens to gather data specific from them helped address an existing data gap in the 13-19 age group, with much of the available data focusing instead on younger children or on adults. VOX intends to serve multiple stakeholders by sharing data with those committed to teens’ well-being in metro Atlanta. The organization also positions itself as a visible leader in understanding and communicating about teens’ needs and behaviors, and brings an authentic youth voice to filling that community need. VOX is metro Atlanta’s home for uncensored teen publishing and self-expression; it connects metro Atlanta teens to resources for building their confidence, increasing their capacity to meet life’s demands and ensuring their future success. The content of the survey questions included after-school activities, risk behaviors, and news information sources. The survey included 50 questions and took approximately 15 minutes to answer which included questions like: What do you do after school? How do you communicate with friends? And, have you participated in sending/receiving sexting messages? (29 percent of them expressed that they had). The survey found that Atlanta teens mostly get their news from friends and social media, with the top three social media sites used being Kik, Instagram and Snapchat. (The VOX survey results contrasted with a Pew Research Center finding that showed Facebook to be the top social media site among teens, followed by Instagram and Snapchat, but that survey polled about 1,000 parents and their teenage children nationwide.) Young people themselves helped announce the survey results to the press and to other youth service providers. At least one VOX teen will be involved in the APHA presentation, demonstrating VOX’s commitment to youth leadership and capacity building. In the future, VOX plans to pursue this pilot initiative by: -Developing strategic partnerships to refine the survey, and expand the survey’s reach and analysis so the community as a whole can better understand and track teen behaviors, attitudes and needs. -Identifying an evaluation partner to help develop the survey and analyze the results. -Disseminating an updated version of the 2017 web-based survey to have at least 1,000 teens respond -Using the data results and analysis to inform community dialogue about teens’ unique needs and to increase service provision for Atlanta-area teenagers.

Background: Distinct areas of Dallas, Texas remain stagnant or continue to experience an increase in teen birth rates despite recent trends of declining teen birth rates. Birth rates in these areas range from 84.2 to 112.9 per 1000 girls, far exceeding the 24 per 1000 girls national birth rate. These communities also have significantly higher STIs and HIV among teens, poverty, disparities in health, housing, and education. Method: A needs assessment was conducted to most effectively address barriers to teen pregnancy prevention. Data was gathered through focus groups and surveys with teens, parents, teen parents, service providers, and medical professionals to identify the barriers to services supporting teen pregnancy prevention, strengths in teen pregnancy prevention efforts, and recommendations the community has to reduce teen birth rates in Dallas. Results: This community collaboration utilized the Getting to Outcomes (GTO) approach which provides a framework for assessing needs amongst other objectives. Findings indicate that teens have a varied source of information choices with regards to sexual health. Surveys indicated that parents were the most frequently chosen as a trusted source of sexual health information, despite reports from parents and community leaders that feel peers have greater influence. Comfort, disclosure and privacy were common key factors to consider for a teen who seeks answers or information about sex.