A closer look at Community Health Services: Adolescent Health Initiative

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This is one in a series of stories highlighting the various segments of Community Health Services.

The Adolescent Health Initiative (AHI), a program of Community Health Services at Michigan Medicine, works to transform the health care landscape to optimize adolescent health and well-being through practice improvement, education, research, and youth and community engagement.

AHI partners with primary care, school-based health and youth-serving organizations spanning 40 states. AHI develops innovative, evidence-driven interventions through national and local partnerships. Recently, AHI has developed new approaches to improving youth-friendliness of mental/behavioral health care practices, increasing access to contraception and training professionals on trauma-informed practices.

AHI is guided by their youth council, The Adolescent Champion Teen Advisory Council, who helps ensure that the youth voice is at the center of their work, and their multidisciplinary Professional Advisory Committee. The AHI team also includes co-medical directors, Terrill Bravender, M.D., M.P.H. and Cornelius D. Jamison, M.D., M.S.P.H., representing Michigan Medicine’s Adolescent and Family Medicine departments.

Services

• Coaching, technical assistance, program support and practice improvement.
  • Pilot AHI’s new Power Meeting: LARC Access, an interactive, web-based tool that guides a team of key staff and providers through a two-hour meeting to create a customized, actionable plan.
• Adolescent-Centered Environment Assessment Process (ACE-AP): A facilitated, comprehensive self-assessment and guided Plan/Do/Study/Act improvement process that includes customized resources and coaching. Currently, AHI is adapting the ACE-AP for Pediatric Oncology/Specialty Care and Behavioral Health Settings.
• Adolescent Champion Model (ACM): An evidence-based intervention that includes the ACE-AP process, on-going technical assistance, and participation in a robust community of practice.
  • Michigan Medicine’s Chelsea Health Center, a Silver-Level ACM re-certification site shared, “Working with AHI, our clinic became more adolescent friendly, from the look of our health center to the way adolescent patients are spoken to regarding their medical care, we’re acting at all levels to be more adolescent friendly.”

Events

• Annual Conference on Adolescent Health: The annual conference brings together an international audience of 450 health care professionals to share research and best practices. More than half of sessions at the conference are co-facilitated by youth. Content areas include sexual health, primary care, behavioral health and school based/community health. Learn more about this year’s virtual event (May 13-14).
• Annual Connection Session: Connection Sessions are day-long interprofessional education opportunities that connect health professionals to cutting edge research and best practices around a topic in adolescent health. The next event will be held Fall 2021.

Free resources

• Webinars: AHI develops and facilitates engaging webinars on adolescent-centered care such as Providing Adolescent-Centered Virtual Care.
• Starter Guides: Mini-toolkits that offer concrete, actionable steps for health care professionals to improve their adolescent-centered care delivery, such as Strategies for Providing Youth-Friendly Services.
• Spark trainings: Ready-to-use mini-trainings that include a PowerPoint presentation, a facilitator script, and follow-up materials on a variety of adolescent health topics.
• Youth-centered posters: Youth-designed posters to welcome and inform adolescent patients.
• Timely Topics Modules: Self-paced web modules that blend youth vignettes and subject matter experts with salient research and practice-based activities responsive to emerging needs in adolescent care, such as Trauma-Informed Care with Adolescent Patients.