RHEY News & Tools: Youth Engagement

Winter 2012  

Dear Colleagues,

 

A number of you who attended our Working Together with Diverse Communities Institute requested additional resources on youth engagement. In response, the second issue of RHEY News & Tools features a selection of excellent resources and tools on this topic, which is central to teen pregnancy prevention. These resources are only a sample of recent thinking, research, and practice. We are extremely fortunate to be working with national partners and grantees who are leaders in positive youth development and engagement. We encourage you to seek out each other's expertise and experience.  

 

In this issue we also include a link to a newly released series of research briefs addressing the sexual health of marginalized youth. Although this resource is not directly related to this issue's theme of youth engagement, it provides critical and current information on sexual health disparities among diverse youth.

 

We also encourage you to take a few moments to respond to our poll on youth participation at your agency. We will share the results in the next newsletter.

 

In the spirit of collaboration,

 

Myriam Hernandez Jennings

JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc.

 Featured ToolTOOL

Being Y-AP Savvy - A Primer on Creating & Sustaining Youth-Adult Partnerships

Shepherd Zeldin and Jessica Collura, ACT for Youth Center of Excellence

 

This manual provides a variety of tools to help you create a vision and action plan for youth-adult partnerships in your organization. Essential questions, "necessary" knowledge, and assessments in each chapter guide users toward organizational change through small group learning and action.

 Featured ArticlesConfrontingGlass

Confronting the Glass Ceiling of Youth Engagement

 Jessica A. Bynoe, AED (Academy for Educational Development)  

 

Seemingly successful partnerships between young people and adults with institutional power can suddenly and without good reason be diminished or terminated, discouraging young people's desire to be involved in their communities in the future. This paper, based on case studies and interviews with young people, adult allies, community organizers and others, provides strategies for overcoming barriers to meaningful youth engagement.


Heath Promotion Club youth members

Teens lead Environmental Justice Tour of Roxbury, MA

Prime3Prime Time: 12-Month Sexual Health Outcomes of a Clinic-based Intervention to Prevent Pregnancy Risk Behaviors

Sieving RE et al. Journal of Adolescent Health 49 (2011) 172-179

 

Prime Time, a clinic-based youth development intervention for female youth at risk uses case management and peer leadership programs to reduce pregnancy risk. The findings of this study, one of the first randomized trials of its kind, suggest that youth development interventions implemented in clinic settings hold promise for reducing pregnancy risk among youth.

  New Research ReviewOregonSexualHealth 

Sexual Health Disparities Among Disenfranchised Youth
L. Kris Gowen and Nicole Aue, Editors; Oregon Health Authority and Research and Training Center for Pathways to Positive Futures, Portland State University       

These research briefs address the unique circumstances, risk factors, and negative sexual health outcomes experienced by each of seven subpopulations of youth.

 

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Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project student

Photo by Jon Crispin

Featured WebsiteACT

(Go to the Website)

 

This user-friendly website of the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence at Cornell University offers a wealth of resources on youth engagement, youth development and adolescent sexual health.  





Also of InterestAlsoOfInterest

Rethinking Youth Engagement Strategies

Desmond Brown

 

New York City is taking bold new steps with public-private partnerships to strengthen youth engagement initiatives for Black and Latino youth to help break the cycle of poverty.

JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc.  We welcome your feedback at RHEY@jsi.com

 

Many thanks to our reviewers:  

Erin E. Johnson, Director of Capacity Building, South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Ramani Sripada, Program Officer, MetroWest Health Foundation

Alex Vila, Full Service Community School Consultant & Trainer, Life Academy 

 
RHEY News & Tools is published by JSI Research & Training Institute's Working with Diverse Communities Component, part of the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention: Integrating Services, Programs, and Strategies Through Community-wide Initiatives project, funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health (OASH), Office of Adolescent Health (OAH)/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the President's Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI).