The Healthy Hive: Youth Voices Shape a Pennsylvania TPP Program
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The Healthy Hive, our youth advisory board, has been instrumental in launching our TPP Program. Not only are we providing opportunities for youth to develop leadership skills and learn about public health, but our team is learning so much from this exceptional group of young folks.Chris Glover, FHCCP Director of Adolescent Empowerment
Family Health Council of Central PA (FHCCP), a first-time Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) grantee, has granted its youth advisory board a level of influence and status often reserved for adults.
The board has been dubbed the Healthy Hive, a brand developed with a local marketing firm that also created a website and informational video. The youth advisory board, with FHCCP staff support, took on the branding project to celebrate their important role in FHCCP TPP programming and recruit more young people to join.
The Healthy Hive has a leadership board and a governance structure that centers youth in all FHCCP TPP project activities. Core Healthy Hive responsibilities include reviewing the FHCCP TPP program curriculum, and all supplemental handouts and promotional materials (to check that it’s medically accurate, culturally and linguistically appropriate, and trauma-informed).
FHCCP isn’t just checking a box by looping the Healthy Hive into these tasks. Following each Healthy Hive review, staff engage the Hive in deep discussion and use that feedback to:
- Adapt the curriculum
- Revise materials to better meet youth needs
- Predict the kinds of questions participants might ask educators, and equip educators with the knowledge and skills they need to respond
The Healthy Hive also helps collect FHCCP needs assessment data; they complete the survey and invite others in their networks to do the same. This snowball strategy helps FHCCP gather data from a large, diverse sample of youth across their 24-county region.
“Our approach and our work are better because of the Hive—they have helped us keep the youth voice at the forefront of everything we do,” says Chris Glover, FHCCP Director of Adolescent Empowerment.
The Hive continues to buzz and has recently started planning to recruit new members this fall. Planning is also underway for Hive members to be featured presenters at FHCCP’s regional coalition meeting in September.
Looking to amplify youth voices in your TPP project? Check out the RHNTC’s meaningful youth engagement resources.