Youth Engagement Is at the Center of Our Work

This week’s theme for National Adolescent Health Month™ (NAHM™) is about increasing youth agency, youth engagement, and training and support for caring adults.

Youth-serving professionals are critical to helping young people advocate for themselves and make good decisions about their health and well-being.

Youth engagement is a central part of the work we do at ETR. With each funded-project, crafted-resource, and opportunity to work with our partners in the field, we strategize around ways to center and advocate for youth involvement, partnership, and the tools that will support them.

Read on in this week’s newsletter to learn about how we engage young people where they are and where we can meet them in the future.

— The ETR Team

P.S. Save the date for YTH Live Global 2024! This FREE fully virtual event, which will be held September 25, 2024, will focus primarily on youth engagement to improve health and well-being. This allows us to direct our full attention to the most innovative and timely youth-driven initiatives. Learn more about it at https://etr.my/YTH-2024.

YTH Live Global is a fully virtual event where we invite youth and adults to share their power and create space to nurture the exchange of innovative ideas, new technologies, and transformational research. 

In this session from YTH Live Global 2023, ETR’s Youth Centered Health Designer, Sarah Han, explores ETR’s Trauma-Informed Youth-Centered Health Design Framework and how we partner with young people to develop radical innovative approaches to entrenched public health issues.

The presentation covers how design thinking is applied and the principles of safety, equity, relationships, empowerment, and resilience are utilized to elevate the voices and power of youth to create positive change in their communities. Estimated watch time: 45 minutes.

This Sex Ed for All Month, let’s remember that young people are the primary stakeholders in their wellbeing and deserve to have a seat at the table!

The Reimagining Young People’s Sexual Health Equity (RYSE) Innovation Hub is a multi-year project of ETR, which will fund cohorts of Innovation Development Teams to conceptualize, develop, and package innovations geared toward addressing equity issues in adolescent sexual health. Stay tuned to learn more information about RYSE and its website release May 28, 2024!

Right now, we are co-designing with Youth Innovation Advisors (YIAs) located across the country to ensure that our Hub centers youth voice and cultural relevance in the innovations we are supporting. 

Check out this blog where we feature two of our RYSE YIAs, who share why this project and Sex Ed for All Month is meaningful to them. Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Looking for youth engagement resources? Check out the Youth Engagement Network (YEN) resource page! There are 15+ downloadable tip sheets and tools made in collaboration with youth-serving partners to support your work with young people. These resources touch on various topics such as integrating youth into your work, a youth involvement assessment tool, engaging youth on social media, and more!

YEN is a past project of ETR, which worked to make a measurable impact on youth engagement by increasing the number and strength of those committed to engaging youth in programs, services, and systems to improve sexual and reproductive health. View those resources and learn more about YEN at the dark blue button above.

ETR envisions a world where all individuals and communities achieve their best health. As advocates of health equity, we cannot emphasize enough the need for us to tend to our own mental and emotional health. During this Mental Health Awareness Month, we recommend starting with our ETR Well-Being & Resilience Model as a foundation to build upon.

This four-page PDF features checklists and reflection questions around reaffirmation, replenishment, reconnection, revitalization, and resistance to renew yourself. Use this free resource to take care of yourself, your community, and those you serve as we work towards a more equitable future.

Join us on June 12 at 12:30 pm PT/ 3:30 pm ET for our next *free* 3 in 30 webinar, Building and Sustaining Syringe Services Programs (SSPs). 

SSPs help protect the health of people who use drugs by providing them with services that lessen the negative consequences associated with drug use and help prevent HIV. Interested in starting an SSP or learning more about them? Join this webinar to discover what you may consider when starting an SSP and where to learn more in-depth strategies to grow and sustain your SSP work.   

In this conversation, ETR will be joined by two guest experts: Tasha Turner-Bicknell, Associate Professor and Director of Advanced Public Health Nursing DNP and Certificate Programs at the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing, and Melissa Hernandez, Executive Director of the PR Project.   

Register for the *free* 3 in 30 webinar here: https://pages.etr.org/evolve3in30

If you can’t make that date and time, you can register at the link above to receive the recorded content on-demand. 

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