Next week is National Public Health Week 2019, or #NPHW19, sponsored by the American Public Health Association (APHA). We believe that adolescent sexual and reproductive health is a social justice issue with public health impacts. These impacts are confounded by how and where youth live, learn, and play and require a holistic, or Youth 360⁰, approach to achieve equity.

What can we do to support and empower young people to thrive? We believe that a health promotion approach will best foster the positive development of all young people and ensure that they are supported and empowered to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.

Health promotion is an approach that enables people to increase control over and improve their health, while also moving beyond a focus on individual behavior to a wide range of social and environmental interventions. The social-ecological model is a theory-based framework that demonstrates that behavior is the result of knowledge, values, and attitudes, as well as social influences, including the family, peers, and other people with whom we associate and the schools, communities, and larger society in which we belong.

But what does this look like in action? Last year, Healthy Teen Network partnered with the Center for Sex Education and Bill Taverner, Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Sexuality Education, for a special issue on the social determinants of health. Our staff contributed two articles and an introduction, but the full issue offers more information on how to integrate the social determinants of health into sexual health education and services:

• Thriving at the Intersection: Integrating Social Determinants of Health and Sexual Health Education to Achieve Positive Outcomes for Youth (Genevieve Martínez-García, Lisette Torres, Carolyn Camacho, Hope Gleicher, and Valerie Sedivy): Two community-based organizations completed a case study using a structured interview guide to illustrate their transition working at the intersection of social determinants of health and sexual and reproductive health.
• Where Youth Live, Learn, and Play Matters: Tackling the Social Determinants of Health in Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (Milagros Garrido, Nick Sufrinko, Janet Max & Nat Cortes): With this review of the body of evidence supporting a relationship between the social determinants of health and adolescent sexual and reproductive health, the authors provide practitioners with a clear understanding of the value of adopting a more comprehensive approach and concrete recommendations for actualizing social determinants of health through programs and services.

Check out the full special issue for all the articles!

Want to join the conversation? There are daily themes for conversation next week:

#NPHW19 encourages us to start new conversations in our communities, with our neighbors, and become advocates for positive change.