This project is the result of a collaboration that NCHE formed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Adolescent and School Health in the Spring of 1999. This five-year collaborative initiative, entitled Growing Healthy: Youth, Parents and Communities, is designed to strengthen the capacity of state and local agencies to help prevent behaviors that place all young people at risk for health-related problems including HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and violence.

Youth face a range of health risk behaviors every day. NCHE has long believed that parents and family are often the first line of defense in preventing many of these behaviors, while simultaneously recognizing the critical importance of fostering school-family-community partnerships. For this reason, the Growing Healthy: Youth, Parents, and Communities initiative has focused its efforts and activities on the following three complex and interrelated components:

Youth Programming

Strengthening Growing Healthy and other comprehensive school health education curricula for students in grades K-6, including the prevention of HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and violence; promoting a coordinated approach to school health programming that will enrich and support the overall health of students.

Parent Programming

Developing and promoting parent education programs which focus on building parent-child communication skills and nurturing family dialogues on the topics of HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and violence; implementing the Can We Talk? parent education program.

Community Network Partnerships

Establishing community partnership networks to promote and sustain programming for youth and parents. Partners include representatives from public education, public health, parent associations, religious organizations, juvenile justice, business and government.

The Growing Healthy: Youth, Parents, and Communities initiative has enabled NCHE to develop collaborative efforts and innovative programming to ensure the health and educational success of young people.