Developing a Statewide Strategy for Meaningful Youth Engagement: Insights from a Youth-Driven Program in Wisconsin.

Purpose: There are various ways to integrate the lived experiences and perspectives of youth and young adults into Maternal Child Health (MCH) goals, initiatives, and programs. This article describes the history, evolution, and current strategy of a program that engages youth from across the state of Wisconsin. It serves as an example for others who may be interested in building capacity for youth leadership and engagement.

Enhancing Communication Among Adolescents and Health Care Providers: Evolution and Evaluation of Youth-Driven Initiative Addressing Barriers.

Background: Significant interpersonal barriers impede the delivery of quality adolescent health care. While a complex issue, public health and health care entities continue to seek ways to work with the populations they serve to better address such challenges.

Methods: The PATCH Teen Educator Program, an initiative of the Providers and Teens Communicating for Health (PATCH) Program, promotes open, honest, and medically accurate conversations between health care professionals and adolescents via youth-led workshops for both clinicians and adolescents.

Engaging Youth in Public Health: Evaluation of Short-term and Long-term Participation in the PATCH Youth Advocacy Fellowship.

Context: Authentic youth engagement is widely recognized as an efficacious strategy to promote adolescent health.

Program: The Providers and Teens Communicating for Health (PATCH) Youth Advocacy Fellowship was created to support Wisconsin's Adolescent Health Program. It strives to bring youth voice to the forefront of adolescent health conversations while also providing young people the knowledge, skills, and opportunities to thrive into adulthood.

Teaching Adolescents to Manage Their Own Health Care.

Many factors impact an adolescent's willingness to appropriately use health-care services and intent to begin the health-care transition process. Published literature continues to show that the way adolescents experience and utilize health-care services is ineffective and has long-term impacts on individuals and systems. Building upon the success of an existing peer-to-peer workshop, a Toolkit was created to provide school-based health professionals the information and resources needed to deliver pertinent information to high school students in one lesson.