National Adolescent Health Month

National Adolescent Health Month™ (NAHM™) 2024 | HHS Office of Population Affairs

"Adolescent Health Month" is a national and statewide initiative that supports partnerships between families and their communities and emphasizes the importance of building on young people’s strengths and potential. This initiative encourages meaningful youth engagement in adolescent health activities and highlights key topics in adolescent health.

The Minnesota Department of Health joins with the HHS Office of Population Affairs (OPA) and many youth serving organizations, volunteers, health care professionals, and communities in providing information, tools and support necessary to support adolescent health.

Below are the four weekly themes MDH has adopted from the national campaign and will share throughout May to heighten awareness about the importance of adolescent health.

Week 1: Ensure and expand access to health care, human services, and safe and supportive environments

All young people need and deserve to have safe and supportive spaces where they can feel physically, mentally, and emotionally safe. Environments like homes, schools, neighborhoods, community groups, peers, and family greatly impact young people’s health and well-being. Safe and supportive health care settings can provide young people with accessible and culturally relevant sexual and reproductive health care they need to make informed decisions about their health and well-being. Adolescents can feel the positive effects of safe and supportive environments now and into adulthood.

By making community resources available to adolescents, we can improve their access to health care and human services. Taking this step is an essential part of helping them grow into healthy adults. Expanding access to services requires collaboration across all levels of government—federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial—and youth-serving professionals.

Parents and caregivers, teachers, health care providers, social workers, and other professionals are among those who see adolescents most often. These adults can help build safety and support by organizing youth-friendly spaces and interacting with adolescents. Youth-serving professionals and health care providers can connect young people with sexual and reproductive health services and give young people accurate and culturally relevant health information. Parents and caregivers can help young people navigate the health care system and form healthy habits.

• Minnesota Department of Health hosts two programs with a shared vision to create successful transitions from youth to adulthood through promoting healthy decisions and providing medically accurate, evidence-based quality sexual education to Minnesota teens. Learn more about these programs at Minnesota’s Healthy Teen Initiative and the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP)
• Minnesota Department of Health also offers the Sexual and Reproductive Health Services grant program (formerly the Family Planning Special Projects grant program) along with, the Minnesota Family Planning, and STI hotline.
• Minnesota Department of Health, School Health Services program provides consultation, training, and support to local school districts to promote the health and safety of Minnesota's young people in schools.

Week 2: Support and translate adolescent health research and improve health information and health literacy

Supporting, translating, and disseminating research and data on adolescent health and well-being is essential to advancing public health. Improving related policies, programs, and practices involves reflection on the entire research process, from funding to survey questions and data collection to how you share findings and put them into practice. Involving young people in research and data collection may support data accuracy and innovation and make research more accessible. This also promotes youth engagement and agency.

Research is also a key source of health information. Access to health information and improved health literacy can empower young people to make informed decisions, advocate for themselves, and navigate complicated health care and human services (including services like health education, counseling, social work, and more). It will also help the caring adults in their lives provide informed guidance and support. Improved health literacy is critical to helping young people build the skills to find, process, and judge the vast amount of health content online.

While much research on adolescents exists, there is still more to learn about their health, experiences, and the programs and supports that most benefit them. Youth-serving professionals, health care providers, and researchers can all work together to advance the research. Parents and caregivers can work directly with the young people in their lives to ensure they know how to find accurate health information.

• The Minnesota Health Literacy Partnership aims to improve the health of all Minnesotans through clear health communication. Their Health Literacy Toolkit (PDF) is a companion piece to the Minnesota Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy and includes trainings, assessment tools, and guides.
• ACP Decisions offers a short article, Four Simple Strategies for Improving Patient Health Literacy. This article provides more in-depth information on of patient health literacy and goes over technology, effective teaching models, language and visual aids to improve health literacy in patients.
• The Healthy Youth Development – Prevention Research Center at the University of Minnesota creates and distributes an annual Minnesota Adolescent Sexual Health Report, which provides adolescent health professionals with most current statistics on the sexual health of Minnesota youth, including pregnancy, birth and STI statistics, trends in adolescent pregnancy and sexual behaviors, and how Minnesota measures up regionally and nationally.

Week 3: Increase youth agency, youth engagement, and support for caring adults

Young people know what programs and services they need to support their health and well-being. Involving young people in creating these programs and policies builds their competence and leadership skills and supports self-determination. Increasing youth agency and engagement benefits young people by building their capacity to become independent adults. Supportive and caring adults are critical to helping young people become powerful advocates for their rights and individual decisions about their health and well-being.

Caring adults, such as family members, caregivers, health care professionals, school staff, and others working with young people, can take steps to engage youth. But these adults need support too. When they have the support, information, and skills they need, they are better equipped to understand young people’s concerns and work with them to make informed decisions to help them thrive.

All adults can support youth agency and engagement by actively listening to young people, centering their voices and lived experience, and involving them in program development. Adults can work together to share resources and information that best support adolescents.

• Minnesota Partnership for Adolescent and Young Adult Health’s Strategic Plan offers action steps, community solutions, and resources to help communities support adolescent health. Learn more at The Minnesota Partnership for Adolescent and Young Adult Health
• As communities and youth-serving organizations develop plans and implement strategies that promote positive youth development and adolescent well-being, it is important that the voices of those with lived experience are included in program design, implementation, and evaluation. Activities and programs that are developed with youth, rather than for youth increase the likelihood that positive decisions will be accepted, adopted, and will become part of their everyday lives. Learn more at the Leading in Partnership with Young Adults memo, created by the Family Youth Services Bureau.  
• Caring adults need accurate and reliable information about adolescent development. The State Adolescent Health Resource Center at the University of Minnesota offers fact sheets and videos for adults about adolescent development. Adolescent & Young Adult Development

Week 4: Eliminate disparities to advance health equity and increase coordination across systems

Adolescents have multiple and diverse needs and require different supports to be healthy. By reducing the burden of disease, injury, and violence, we allow adolescents to reach their fullest potential. Many young people experience health disparities that disproportionately affect their communities due to the systems and environments where they are born, grow, live, age, play, and worship. These social determinants of health include:

• Economic stability,
• Education access and quality,
• Health care access and quality,
• Neighborhood and built environment, and
• Social and community context.

We can promote health and well-being for all adolescents by addressing social drivers and meeting their diverse needs. To advance health equity, increase coordination and collaboration within and across the systems serving young people. These systems can include pediatric settings, social service programs, and the child welfare system. Coordination across settings and systems can maximize resources, reduce duplication of efforts, and promote quality and transparency. This could mean putting services in one location, streamlining application and referral systems, or sharing data and communicating across programs.

Everyone can play a part in improving systems to advance health equity. Health care and human services providers can work with youth-serving professionals to coordinate care across settings. Parents, caregivers, legal representatives, and youth can share their feedback so service providers and policy makers can see gaps in coordination.

• Transition Toolkit - Family Voices of Minnesota: The Transition Toolkit focuses on the transition from pediatric to adult health care. The website offers multiple resources for youth, providers and caregivers to support youth during this time.  
• Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication | Gateway to Health Communication | CDC: The Health Equity Principles for Inclusive Information provides public health workers with tools to prioritize a health equity lens in health communications.
• Community Engagement Assessment Tool (PDF): The Community Engagement Assessment Tool by Nexus and Partners provides information for practitioners and organizations looking to further develop their knowledge in community engagement and evaluate their programs.

Resources for Parents and Teens

• Advocates for Youth
• Power to Decide: The Campaign to Prevent Unplanned Pregnancy
• Planned Parenthood: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota
• CDC - Reproductive Health: Teen Pregnancy
• Tips for Parents and Caregivers of Teens | HHS Office of Population Affairs
• MySelf My Health

Resources for Providers

• Infographic: Teens Visiting Health Clinic | CDC
• CDC - Teen Pregnancy Prevention for Healthcare Providers
• American Academy of Pediatrics: Adolescent Sexual Health
• 7 Tips for Youth-Supporting Professionals for Talking with Youth About Sexual and Reproductive Health - Activate Collective

Additional Resources

• Minnesota Adolescent Sexual Health Report 
• Positive Youth Development Resources | HHS Office of Population Affairs
• The Minnesota Partnership for Adolescent and Young Adult Health