Author: Lt. Katie Hager, BSN, RN, Division of the Civilian Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps
Looking for great new partners for your emergency preparedness or health education programs? To bring energy, enthusiasm, a willingness to learn new things and a unique perspective to your mission and projects, tap into an often overlooked community resource: teens. Think about ways you can energize teens and encourage them to use their time, talents and skills to help their communities.
There are millions teens between 14 and 18 years old who are dedicated to making their dreams a reality, discovering new skills, and pursuing career and life goals. They’re driven to make a positive difference in the world. What they learn and practice now affects their behavior and habits as adults, including in health and emergency preparedness.
So by engaging them, you can help them achieve their goals while improving your community’s health and resilience for a lifetime. It’s a win-win. Engaging teens just takes a little creative thinking and a willingness to partner.
The first step is a broad search for youth organizations interested in partnering. Be sure to look beyond students interested in public health and emergency management, and don’t be afraid to start small; with successful first steps, a partnership grows stronger, bigger and better.
The most common place to start engaging teens is within the schools in your community. Many school districts now require community service credits in order to graduate and so by partnering with organizations, teens earn required credit and your community reaps immediate and long-term benefits of that engagement.
In addition, your community probably has a number of 4-H groups, faith-based youth organizations, national scouting programs, and career and technical student organizations. Learn about the options that exist in your community and find out if any of those groups would be interested in partnering with you on a few projects.
How could it work? Let’s say a shelter is opening in your community and toiletries kits are needed for the shelter. You could partner with a school or community organization so that young people can sort the supplies, assemble the kits, and provide the completed kits to the shelter. Or maybe you’re using school facilities for a health fair. Teens can serve as planners, educators, and marketing specialists who boost social media awareness of your event.
Maybe your public education and outreach material desperately needs an update. You could reach out to a local graphic design class or to DECA, an international association of high school and college students studying marketing, management, and entrepreneurship. Teens can help ensure that the program is effective with an often hard to reach demographic: other teens.
Teens are social networking nodes within the community, too, and their engagement and support on a specific topic or program can permeate through the layers of society to parents, guardians, adult mentors, teachers, younger siblings, fellow students, and teen organizations.
If you are worried about liability issues, remember that young people may be able to participate in health activities through a school, community organization, or place of worship and, therefore, could be covered under that organization’s liability protection. So to engage teens, consider partnering with local high schools, community organizations or places of worship.
The HHS Division of the Civilian Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) has partnered with youth organizations since its inception in 2002. We know that engaging young people requires treating them as equals in decision-making and responsibility. They need to know that they are respected and that they are empowered to contribute as full team members.
Some MRC units allow teens to serve as MRC members; others partner with local organizations to encourage participation in health activities. Other units create Junior or Youth MRC units. All MRC units are encouraged to organize, identify needs and act to fulfill those needs within their community.
At the national level, DCVMRC partners with HOSA-Future Health Professionals to develop teens’ interest in public health, preparedness, and the MRC mission. HOSA-Future Health Professionals is organized into chapters throughout the country with a two-fold mission of promoting career opportunities for youth in the health care sector and enhancing the delivery of quality health care to all.
You can leverage this partnership. HOSA has nearly 165,000 members through 47 state associations with membership at the secondary, postsecondary, and collegiate levels, including students enrolled in health science and biomedical science programs or who have an interest in pursuing careers in the health professions.
Has your organization engaged teens or pre-teens in promoting health, emergency preparedness or community resilience? Share your experience by commenting on this blog.
