The Goals of Take Action for Adolescents

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Overview of the Goals

Take Action for Adolescents – A Call to Action for Adolescent Health and Well-Being (“Take Action for Adolescents”) advances the vision that all adolescents in the United States should have the safety, support, and resources to thrive, be healthy, and have equitable opportunity to realize their full potential. Achieving the breadth and scope of this vision requires intentional collaboration and coordination across all levels of society.

Take Action for Adolescents is a call to action for adults—including policy makers; health care and human service providers and organizations; youth-serving professionals and organizations; parents, legal representatives, and caregivers—to work collaboratively for change that benefits the health of young people.

Take Action for Adolescents outlines eight goals, each with potential action steps, that are designed to inspire individuals and organizations to develop innovative approaches that break down silos, improve systems that impact young people, and identify policies and programs that support young people and help them thrive.

Goal 1: Eliminate Disparities to Advance Health Equity

Part of the vision outlined by Take Action for Adolescents is that every young person can attain a state of good health and well-being, regardless of their circumstances. Good health and well-being include reducing the burden of disease, injury, and violence and having the opportunity and space to reach one’s fullest potential. Beyond a healthier population, promoting health equity can support the prosperity of U.S. adolescents and advance a more just society.

The conditions or systems and environments in which people are born, grow, live, work, play, worship, and age are called the “social determinants of health.” These determinants include economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context. Significant differences in social determinants of health exist between racial and ethnic groups, which can contribute to poor health outcomes and health disparities. The social determinants need to be addressed in order to create environments that promote health and well-being for all.

This goal aims to achieve health equity by eradicating systemic disparities, addressing social factors that affect adolescents across their lifespan, and ensuring all young people can attain a state of good health and well-being. This work should be grounded in cultural humility, with the goal of shifting power imbalances and developing mutually beneficial and person-centered partnerships to improve adolescent health and well-being. Acknowledging and addressing the multiple forces that shape social inequalities and discrimination will strengthen approaches to improve health equity.

Action Steps to Advance Health Equity

Because reducing disparities and promoting health equity requires systemic change, the people best positioned to advance progress in this goal are policy makers, health care and human service providers and organizations, and youth-serving professionals and organizations.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Make investments to support programs that address basic needs that impact a young person’s health and well-being.
Consider the unique needs of populations and individuals when designing policies and programs focused on improving the health and well-being of young people.
Enact policies with explicit aim to address the social, economic, and environmental factors that negatively impact the health and well-being of young people.

Sample Action Steps for Health Care and Human Service Providers

Expand support for existing programs that enable recruitment and placement of health care and human service providers in areas that are historically underserved.
Partner together to mitigate potential barriers to care and provide screening for social determinants of health.
Employ adolescent-centered design and create and implement culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate materials.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Employ youth-centered design and create and implement culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate educational materials, patient care strategies, and preventive programs.
Support and promote the strengths, assets, and social capital of every community by providing technical assistance and resources to train community members to support adolescents.
Consult with and learn from leaders and members of the communities being served.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to reduce disparities and promote health equity:

Can we disaggregate data to help us understand which adolescents experience poorer health outcomes?
Who is usually in the room in conversations about health, and whose perspectives are missing?

Share social media messages about how to eliminate disparities to advance health equity.

Goal 2: Increase Youth Agency and Youth Engagement

In line with current research on adolescent development and other organizations, Take Action for Adolescents supports the needs of young people between the ages of 10 and 24. Over this time span, the roles adolescents have in society change. These changes include increasing expectations to be able to manage their health, finances, and general life as well as to contribute positively to their communities. Increasing youth agency and youth engagement involves providing young people with age-appropriate opportunities to advocate for their needs. People working with or creating systems that serve youth should find opportunities to build young people’s skills in navigating various systems.

Increasing youth agency and youth engagement benefits young people by building their capacity to become independent adults. This increased capacity can boost their confidence as they transition into adulthood. This goal also supports the creation of better programs and improves equity by shifting power to the people directly impacted by the systems. Young people know what they need and can be powerful advocates for their rights and individual decisions. Programs and services are often designed and implemented without input from young people. Involving young people in co-creating programs and policies builds their confidence, competence, and leadership skills and supports self-determination while providing opportunities to improve their own health and the health of their peers.

Action Steps to Increase Youth Agency and Engagement

All adults can support youth agency and engagement by actively listening to young people. Policy makers and service providers can specifically support youth agency and engagement by creating or supporting systems that are easy to navigate and allow for feedback.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Make investments to support paid internships for students to participate in adolescent health and well-being research, program development, and/or policy making.
Involve young people as meaningful partners in user-driven design of programs, program evaluations and research studies, and services.
Engage young people in the policy making process by inviting them to share their stories and experiences.

Sample Action Steps for Health Care and Human Service Providers

Center the voices of young people in discussions of how to reduce barriers to accessing services and improve usability and coordination of services.
Provide opportunities for young people to participate in the decision-making process on issues that impact their health and well-being.
Teach young people how to navigate the health care system and obtain and use health insurance coverage.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Develop and disseminate information and images that empower young people and combat negative stereotypes and perceptions of adolescents.
Engage young people in designing, implementing, and evaluating programs and interventions and use their lived experiences to inform policy decisions.
Form Adolescent Advisory Boards and Community Advisory Boards that include young people with diverse perspectives and experiences.

Sample Action Steps for Parents, Legal Representatives, and Caregivers

Create a safe and supportive environment for young people to ask questions of caring adults and discuss their mental and physical health care needs.
Offer guidance to support young people in making health care and human services decisions.
Encourage young people to think critically about what influences their lives and decisions.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to promote youth agency and youth engagement:

When was the last time I actively listened to young people? What did I do after that conversation?
What are simple things we can change about our structure so that it’s easier for young people to share their perspectives and their concerns?

Share social media messages about increasing youth agency and youth engagement.

Goal 3: Ensure Access to Safe and Supportive Environments

The physical, mental, and emotional environments that make up where young people live, go to school, work, and play greatly affect their health. Some of these effects are direct and obvious – such as the health challenges that can come from being exposed to lead or experiencing violence. Other effects are more complex and subtle. For example, the quality or availability of grocery stores can affect a young person’s food security. Another example is how an adolescents’ positive connections with adults can serve as a buffer to the effects of negative or traumatic experiences.

Adolescents, especially those at younger ages, have limited ability to choose their environments (e.g., their school is likely assigned, limited transportation may mean limited options for recreation). For this reason, considering the natural and built aspects of the environment as well as the physical and emotional is important, especially for supporting the young people who face disproportionate risks associated with environmental hurdles like crime, violence, abuse, trauma, prejudice, and racism. Furthermore, emotional safety can encourage adolescents to meaningfully engage in systems.

Action Steps to Ensure Safe and Supportive Environments

Policy makers shape the broader environments that adolescents experience and set the stage for professionals’ abilities to create safe and supportive places in the services they provide. As the people adolescents see more regularly, health care providers; youth-serving professionals; and parents, caregivers, and legal representatives, build safety and support through how they organize spaces and interact with adolescents.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Champion equal and equitable rights, policies, and legal frameworks to ensure all young people have privacy and non-discrimination protections without regard to race and ethnicity, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation, disability, and other demographic factors.
Create policies that promote digitally safe environments.
Support age-appropriate comprehensive consent and sexual health education that promotes gender equity and teaches health communication skills.

Sample Action Steps for Health Care and Human Service Providers

Work with adolescents to create environments where young people can comfortably discuss sensitive health issues in settings that are culturally responsive, inclusive of all adolescents, and reflective of the population served.
Identify opportunities to hire providers and support staff from the community being served and others with lived experiences relatable to young people.
Train providers to recognize signs of family and intimate partner violence and provide appropriate resources for care.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Create and expand access to a wide variety of physically, financially, and geographically accessible early intervention, primary prevention, and recreational opportunities for young people such as accessible health centers, after-school sports clubs, and community service activities.
Train school staff to foster a welcoming and nurturing environment for all young people, increase school connectedness, and improve classroom management techniques.
Teach and promote digital health literacy.

Sample Action Steps for Parents, Legal Representatives, and Caregivers

Provide opportunities for intergenerational learning, collaboration, and social connection, particularly for community improvement efforts.
Create opportunities for adolescents to learn skills that prepare them to make positive decisions by using interactive and peer learning techniques.
Deliver and reinforce education and supportive guidance for young people on consent and confidentiality, health relationships, and preventing sexual coercion and sexual violence.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to ensure access to safe and supportive environments for adolescents:

Where do most young people in our community like to spend time? What makes those spaces welcoming and supportive for young people?
How could we make our space more welcoming and supportive?
Do our spaces cater to specific kinds of young people? Are there unspoken expectations of young people that make the space feel unsafe or inaccessible (e.g., assuming a certain level of mobility)?

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Goal 4: Increase Coordination and Collaboration Within and Across Systems

All people, including adolescents, are complex. They have multiple needs and require different supports to be healthy. Take Action for Adolescents takes a whole-person approach that aims to address the physical, behavioral, social, and environmental aspects of a young person’s life and how those aspects are connected.

There is no single, coordinated mechanism to access services that promote health and well-being for adolescents. In fact, current funding and resources are often distributed through specific systems, each with their own rules that can be hard to navigate. However, coordination and collaboration across these systems benefits both young people and service providers. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that coordination efforts are at the core of improving the quality of adolescent health care, and that integrated health care delivery systems may lead to greater community orientation and more explicit consideration of adolescents’ needs. A “no wrong door” set of policies that allows adolescents to connect to all the services needed regardless of where they enter into systems can support upstream prevention efforts that lead to better health outcomes. Beyond the benefits to young people, coordination and collaboration benefits systems and service providers by maximizing resources, reducing duplication of efforts, promoting quality and transparency, and creating and sustaining health equity.

Coordination and collaboration can occur in a variety of ways. It could look like putting services in one location to make it easier for adolescents to get care. Coordination also can look like streamlining or linking application systems to support referrals. Additionally, sharing data and greater communication can help programs be aware of each other’s efforts to strengthen collaboration and coordination.

Action Steps to Increase Coordination and Collaboration

Collaboration and coordination are features of how a system operates that take time and trust to build. Policy makers have a special role in checking whether rules and regulations encourage collaboration and adjusting those rules and regulations as needed. Service providers across systems can reflect on their own administrative practices and make concerted efforts to communicate. As people using or helping adolescents use various services, parents, caregivers, and legal representatives play an important role in providing feedback so service providers and policy makers can see gaps in coordination.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Prioritize sustainable and scalable investments of care models that have integrated mental and physical health services and facilitate equitable reimbursement and funding for a range of health services.
Create and maintain a widely available repository of adolescent health and well-being information, resources, and contacts at the federal, state, tribal, local, and/or territorial levels to promote and inspire collaboration and coordination.
Establish shared goals and identify, promote, and make investments to support effective methods of and incentives for collaboration and coordination.

Sample Action Steps Health Care and Human Service Providers

Identify and implement strategies for co-locating other health care and human services needed by adolescents to increase accessibility.
Maintain robust referral networks with adolescent health specialists and other adolescent-friendly providers in the community who can meet the wide array of health care and human services needs.
Revise intake forms and processes, based on feedback from young people to reduce barriers for accessing care and services and better coordinate existing care and services.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Expand support for Communities of Practice and bring professionals together to share research, knowledge, and best practices, support each other, and mentor peers.
Foster collaboration between schools and community health and human services resources while promoting awareness of legal reporting responsibilities, confidentiality restrictions, and consent for services.
Identify and empower an adolescent health and well-being champion in the organization or community and align efforts with the State Adolescent Health Coordinator to manage and maximize investments.

Sample Action Steps for Parents, Legal Representatives, and Caregivers

Provide input to policy makers on how to improve coordination and accessibility of services and systems for adolescents.
Engage in Community Advisory Boards and share lived experiences navigating health care and human services and offer suggestions for improving coordination.
Support adolescents in navigating multiple complex systems to ensure they receive the care and services they need.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to increase coordination and collaboration within and across systems:

What organizations in our community are working to serve or support adolescents? Where does their work overlap with ours and where does it differ?
How would I rate our current level of coordination?
What could more coordination and collaboration allow us to accomplish?
What organizations and/or services would I like to see bundled together?

Share social media messages about increasing coordination and collaboration within and across systems.

Goal 5: Expand Access to Health Care and Human Services

Health care refers to prevention and treatment offered through the medical system and its providers while human services are supports that can help people meet their needs (e.g., the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, safe and supportive housing, Medicaid, programs that support people with disabilities, education, and training assistance). Studies have shown that the origin of most adult diseases can be traced back to childhood and adolescence. Additionally, most health care visits by adolescents are to get treatment for conditions or injuries that could have been prevented if found and addressed at an earlier, comprehensive visit. Access to both health care and needed human services support adolescents’ health now, which in turn can help them grow into healthy adults.

Where adolescents are and the resources available to them personally and their community can affect how easy it is for them to get health care or use human services. These factors can include things like the available health care and human services workforce in an area, distance between facilities (e.g., in rural areas), time to seek support, and familiarity with different services. Different models of providing health care and human services exist, including Federally Qualified Health centers, school-based health centers, community-based organizations, and even online providers. These different models offer potential solutions that communities can consider to address gaps in access.

Improving access to preventive health care and human services requires collaboration and alignment of activities across federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial governments, and youth-serving providers and organizations.

Action Steps to Expand Access to Health Care and Human Services

Policy makers play a role in setting the requirements for individuals to access services and whether and how specific program models can operate. Health care and human service providers and youth-serving professionals determine the quality of their respective services and are important connectors to other providers.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Expand support for pediatric and adolescent primary care with a focus on preventive care and integrated mental health, substance use treatment, and human services.
Make investments to support adolescent-specific services, scholarships, and fellowships to incentivize more health care and human service professionals in the fields of medicine, nursing, social work, and psychology to specialize in treating adolescents.
Invest resources in training, retraining, and evaluating cross-cultural competencies to build a workforce that is equipped to care for diverse adolescent populations.

Sample Action Steps for Health Care and Human Service Providers

Provide services and supports that are tailored to the developmental stages of adolescents including the transition to adulthood.
Expand patient-centered medical homes where most of a young person’s health care and human services needs can be coordinated in a primary care practice.
Advocate for more school-based health centers, school-based referral systems, and mobile health care vans for improved connections between schools and community sources of care.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Encourage state policy makers to advance laws that support young people’s ability to access health care and human services.
Collaborate with leaders, workers, and local navigators in community health care and human services to improve access to care, coordinate health care and human services, and leverage community expertise.
Expand and replicate effective programs for young people that foster positive youth development (PYD), improve health outcomes, and address mental health, sexual and reproductive health, and other health care needs.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to expand access to health care and human services:

What is the current capacity of our health and human services programs to meet young people’s needs — including staff, time, resources, and knowledge and skills to provide quality support?
What are the common reasons adolescents and their families in our area do not obtain needed health care or human services?
Which organization’s services complement ours, and how can we work together to ensure that we reach as many adolescents as possible?
How do we leverage models such as telehealth, school-based, or community programs to increase the reach of services?

Share social media messages about how to expand access to health care and human services.

Goal 6: Strengthen Training and Support for Caring Adults

Having a positive connection with at least one caring adult is a large protective factor for many young people. Caring adults can include parents, legal representatives, and caregivers who make sure adolescents are healthy and safe, equip them with the skills and resources to succeed as adults, and instill cultural values. Teachers, coaches, mentors, other youth-serving professionals, and health care providers also can fill these roles.

The process of forming positive relationships and being a safe, supportive presence for adolescents, like any other task, requires knowledge and skills. Specifically, caring adults should understand the evolving developmental needs and abilities of adolescents so they can best support young people on their journey toward adulthood. Part of this understanding includes being aware of changes in young people’s relationships with adults as they age and gain greater independence and responsibility over their lives. Making high-quality information easy-to-find and offering training can build adults’ capacity to understand young people’s concerns and work with young people to make informed decisions that will help them thrive.

Beyond increasing knowledge and skills through training, supporting caring adults also includes ensuring that they have the time, bandwidth, and backing to be able to put that knowledge to use. The social determinants of health that affect adolescents may also affect their parents, caregivers, and/or legal representatives (e.g., poverty, transportation challenges, difficulty understanding complex systems). Professionals working with young people may be constrained by the available time, budgets, and/or work priorities to both learn skills and put them into practice.

People who care for and/or work with young people generally have good intentions. Parents, caregivers, and legal representatives; youth-serving professionals; and health care providers can be strong partners to each other and to adolescents. Building these adults’ capacity by providing information and supports can help them be a positive influence in young people’s lives.

Action Steps to Strengthen Training and Support for Caring Adults

Policy makers and professionals all have roles in shaping the availability and quality of information about adolescents, especially the information that is provided to parents, caregivers, and legal representatives. All adults can work together to share and use the best available knowledge to support adolescents.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Support the implementation of flexible and accessible programs for caring adults to increase their awareness of adolescent development and improve their ability to support young people.
Disseminate and publish tools and resources on cultural humility and awareness, principles of positive youth development (PYD), recognizing and treating the health impacts of trauma in young people, and addressing racism and discrimination against adolescents who are historically underserved.
Create an accessible central repository to house resources or links to resources for caring adults to foster health literacy among caring adults and young people.

Sample Action Steps for Health Care and Human Service Providers

Create opportunities for health care and human service providers to train professionals about identifying trauma-related health needs and referring to specialty care as needed and for youth-serving professionals to teach clinicians about positive youth development (PYD).
Provide tailored information for caring adults on websites and social media in waiting rooms to support them in helping young people navigate available services.
Provide targeted resources for expectant and parenting adolescents.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Provide peer support and mentoring for caring adults.
Provide skills training programs for caring adults to help them understand their young person’s feelings and behaviors.
Work with community, faith-based, and national youth-serving organizations to provide information on available services and programs and ensure accessible and culturally affirming training for caring adults.

Sample Action Steps for Parents, Legal Representatives, and Caregivers

Provide input to policy makers on how to best support caring adults in helping young people thrive, be healthy, and have equitable opportunities to achieve their full potential.
Participate in available peer support and mentoring programs with other caring adults.
Participate in available, effective programs to gain the skills and confidence needed to understand adolescent feelings and behaviors, serve as caring adult role models, and create safe opportunities for young people.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to strengthen training and support for caring adults:

How much do I know about adolescent health and development? What aspects of working with young people are challenging and why?
How do I share information about adolescent health and the needs of adolescents with others?
What are some ways that I can help other adults be a supportive influence in adolescents’ lives?

Share social media messages about strengthening training and support for caring adults.

Goal 7: Improve Health Information and Health Literacy

Adolescents go through many physical, mental, and social changes in the ages between 10 to 24. Without information or context, these changes can feel scary, confusing, or alienating. Young people need to understand how their bodies work as well as how specific behaviors can affect their health now and into the future. They also need knowledge and skills to understand and navigate the many complex systems that provide support. Access to health information and improved health literacy can empower young people to make good 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.

For health information to be accessible, it needs to be easily understood and easily found by the people it is meant to reach (e.g., young people; parents, caregivers, and legal representatives; non-health professionals). Adapting and updating existing materials can ensure that health information remains accurate and is culturally appropriate to different communities. The process of adapting and updating existing materials can be especially powerful if young people can share their perspectives and ideas. Making accurate health information available can also help reduce stigma around adolescent behaviors. Moreover, these efforts may better serve young people who are historically underserved by health care and human services systems.

In addition to providing information, it is also important to build health literacy – the skills needed to find, take in, and judge health information. There is a wide amount of information available online, some of which is either inaccurate or misleading. Health education for adolescents can support health literacy as well as guidance from trusted sources. Because of the important role trusted sources play in supporting adolescents, building the health literacy of caring adults is also important so they can feel comfortable talking about sensitive health topics.

Action Steps to Improve Health Literacy

Policy makers have power to dictate what health information is available and the degree to which adults feel comfortable sharing information. Health care and human service providers; youth-serving professionals; and parents, caregivers, and legal guardians serve as important intermediaries to health information.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Create a clearinghouse on adolescent health and well-being and promote it through a social media campaign directed at young people and their parents, legal representatives, and caregivers.
Create free and easy-to-find information pathways for young people and their families by making investments to support additional computers in schools and public libraries and advocating for Internet access for people who are historically underserved by health care and human services systems.
Support training and technical assistance for federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial agencies and grantees to promote health literacy and combat misinformation and disinformation.

Sample Action Steps for Health Care and Human Service Providers

Provide training for youth-serving professionals delivering health education to ensure they have access to current and accurate materials, understand adolescent development, and are empowered to answer young people’s questions.
Deliver youth-centered counseling and information that support understanding of medically accurate and clinically appropriate information, promote health literacy, and combat misinformation.
Provide accurate understandable, easily available, and accessible information for adolescents and caring adults.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Deliver school-based health education in elementary, middle, and high school that is high quality, medically accurate, and addresses issues of concern to young people.
Encourage public education campaigns, podcasts, and social media content created or co-created by young people to educate their peers on health equity issues and life skills related to health and well-being.
Direct young people and caring adults to accurate, understandable, reliable, youth-friendly information and platforms so they can validate and fact-check health-related information.

Sample Action Steps for Parents, Legal Representatives, and Caregivers

Learn about health issues that affect today’s adolescents.
Identify and correct misinformation and disinformation.
Mentor young people in assessing the accuracy and reliability of information to strengthen their health literacy.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to improve health information and health literacy:

What kind of tools and resources exist in my community to help adolescents understand the health care system and their health choices?
How does social media and the Internet affect how adolescents get health information? How can my organization benefit from that?

Share social media messages about improving health information and health literacy.

Goal 8: Support, Translate, and Disseminate Research

It is important to support, translate, and disseminate research and data on adolescent health and well-being to advance policies, programs, and practices.

While much research has been done, there is still more to learn about adolescents’ health, their experiences, and which programs and supports are most beneficial for them. It is especially important to build understanding of adolescent health topics where youth have had limited participation in research and/or have been underserved by health care and human services systems. The environments in which adolescents live continues to change as technology, demographics, and systems shift over time. Closing research gaps is essential to a national, data-driven effort to advance adolescent health and well-being.

Supporting, translating, and disseminating research involves reflecting on the full research process, from the questions posed and data gathered to how the findings are shared and put into practice. Research presents a unique opportunity for youth engagement and agency since many young people are eager to share their perspectives in all stages of the research process. Involving young people within research and data collection may support data accuracy and innovative research methods, improve dissemination, and identify ways to translate research so that it is easily understood.

Action Steps to Support, Translate, and Disseminate Research

Policy makers can control many of the resources needed to conduct high-quality research and can shape how data is gathered (e.g., the availability and use of vetted national surveys, requirements for administrative data of grantees). Health care and human service providers and youth-serving professionals are responsible for the data from their respective organizations and can be important disseminators of information. Researchers develop survey questions, conduct evaluations and studies, and provide support to policy makers and other professionals in understanding data and research.

Sample Action Steps for Policy Makers

Develop, in coordination with federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial agencies and private and non-profit researchers, a detailed adolescent health and well-being research agenda that adopts a strengths-based positive youth development (PYD) approach.
Expand national and other surveys to address data gaps, especially for populations of young people who are underrepresented in current data collection efforts.
Broaden data collection and access to data sources to provide insights by community and locality on social determinants of health and well-being, positive outcomes, and opportunities.

Sample Action Steps for Health Care and Human Service Providers

Partner with researchers to investigate and expand available evidence on effective strategies for improving access and quality of health care and human services for adolescents.
Translate and apply existing research into evidence-based guidelines for health care and human service providers to use when serving adolescents.
Participate in policy forums to share practical insights about the actual impact of inadequate data on the quality of care and the potential value of accurate tailored data.

Sample Action Steps for Youth-Serving Professionals

Partner with researchers to develop and evaluate innovative, evidence-based programs designed to impact health behaviors and outcomes that are top priority for the adolescents in the community.
Make investments to expand existing private funding opportunities for researchers to address the needs of young people from historically underserved populations.
Develop goals and measurable objectives to monitor and collect information on the implementation of policies and programs and provide tools for implementers to measure progress toward executing the stated goals and objectives.

Sample Action Steps for Researchers

Leverage existing and create new innovative data collection tools and surveillance methods.
Collect and disseminate data to demonstrate how social determinants impact health with a goal of influencing effective, data-driven programs and policy outcomes.
Provide technical assistance and guidance to federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial agencies, community-based organizations, and schools, colleges, and universities on how to conduct Youth-Led Participatory Action Research.

What's Next?

Here are some questions to consider when working to support, translate, and disseminate research:

How do I collect and use adolescent health data in my day-to-day work?
If I am a researcher or part of a research project, how can I make my findings easier to understand (especially for those who are not familiar with my field)?
How do I encourage young people to be involved in research on adolescent health and well-being?

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