Positive Youth Development

“American teenagers today face an array of health risks that are fundamentally different from those which afflict children and adults. How can we help our youth?” 
 
In 2000, those words introduced Growing Absolutely Fantastic Youth, a monograph by the University of Minnesota’s Division of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Health and the Konopka Institute for Best Practices in Adolescent Health (SAHRC’s predecessor). At the time, we were talking about 25 years of research and growing interest in resiliency and protective factors, known today as a positive youth development (PYD) framework.  
 
Mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook feed last week, I came across this timely post: “The only thing harder than parenting a teen is actually being one.”
 
One of the few things that hasn’t changed in the last quarter-century is that adolescents have fundamentally different needs than children or adults, and those needs are intricately tied to significant physical, emotional and social development, growth and changes that take place in adolescence, changes second only to infancy. 
 
I needed this reminder. The difference for us caring adults is that we, theoretically, have developed some of the skills to navigate the roller coaster.
 
Our culture remains ambivalent about the experience of being an adolescent: we occasionally expect them to act and perform like fully-functioning adults, and we rarely afford them opportunities to participate in the public sphere and be taken seriously. We really can’t have it both ways.
 
Last month, thanks to support from the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs’ workforce development funding and staff, we co-hosted an in person meeting in Minneapolis with more than 40 representatives from the Adolescent Health workforce from 29 states and territories, including Alaska, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Palau, and the Mariana Islands.
 
It clarified some things for us. One, no amount of virtual connection can replace the buzz of being in the same room with colleagues. And two, our group brings huge energy to the challenge of upping each jurisdiction’s understanding of the key developmental tasks of adolescence. When we incorporate this lens into policies and programs that meet young people where they are at, American culture proactively acknowledges the roller-coaster and helps us ride it together.
 
That’s where you come in: superhero, champion, advocate of young people. Trying to understand young people through a developmental lens is your mission. Helping others see it, too; that’s your superpower. 
 
To those of you who couldn’t join us in Minneapolis, we missed you. And we hope this edition of Connections bottles and shares some of that energy and provides some tools to help you and your colleagues sharpen your development lens and understanding of young people.
 
On behalf of the State Adolescent Health Resource Center Team,Lynn Bretl, MPP
Director, State Adolescent Health Resource Center at the University of Minnesota