A team made up of adults and students from a School-Based Health Center’s (SBHC), School Health Advisory Council (SHAC), Youth Advisory Group (YAG), and/or other youth groups (ie. Natural Helpers, Peer to Peer Helpers) that work in partnership with SBHC are invited to participate in the Youth Health Literacy Project.
The Project Goal: Improve the health and reduce health disparities of adolescents by improving their health literacy through social media developed and guided by youth including those served by School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs).
The objectives of the project are to:
- Improve youth health literacy which is defined as the ability to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions and follow instructions for treatment. Youth health literacy will be promoted in the following areas: understanding health conditions, risk and care; navigating the health care system; and self-advocacy and management in health care.
Lilly Martinez from the Española YHLP team tweets a link to find accurate information! - Employ and/or develop social media technologies that will attract diverse New Mexico youth, are informed by youth and direct youth to currently developed social media applications that contain timely, accurate medical and behavioral health information. Increase skills of youth to develop social media applications, messages and materials to promote health and prevent negative health consequences in youth.
#YHLP representing Isleta, Albuquerque, San Felipe, Quemado, Mountainair, Española, Peñasco, West Las Vegas, and Gallup. - Engage youth to disseminate the messages and materials to youth (and potentially to families and health care providers) statewide throughout New Mexico through the use of social media technologies.
- Engage schools, School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs), youth engagement organizations, School Health Advisory Councils (SHACs) and others to meaningfully involve youth in health literacy improvement.
- Improve the project through the use of feedback.
- Participate in the project evaluation and quality improvement
Involvement includes attendance at the Organizing Youth Engagement (OYE) Conference May 30 – June 1, 2013 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Albuquerque, NM and continued contribution of effort through December, 2013, by developing and disseminating social media messages that guide youth to accurate and youth-friendly information about health issues.
With generous support from Blue Cross Blue Shield of NM, the NM Alliance for School-Based Health Care is providing stipends for youth teams statewide to participate in the Youth Health Literacy Project to have fun, network, learn, build leadership skills, share and celebrate their success with a specific focus of improving youth health literacy.
To visit the #YHLP Facebook Page, click here.
To follow us on Twitter, click here.
Sponsored by:
In collaboration with:
