Peer Health Exchange (PHE) is a national health equity nonprofit, and was originally founded by young people, for young people in 2003. Since our Chicago office opened in 2007, we’ve reached over 33,000 Chicago ninth graders and trained 3,000 college student volunteers across the city. Our skills-based health curriculum is informed by 15 years of experience, evidence-based best practices, and the findings from both internal and external evaluation. It has also been shaped by feedback from adolescent health and youth development experts, high school students, volunteers, and partners.
Peer Health Exchange Chicago will provide 120 ninth graders with access to our 14-workshop curriculum in which they practice skills in decision-making, designed to empower students to translate their knowledge into action. This focus on skill-building and the content of the curriculum are aligned with the National Health Education Standards, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s characteristics of effective health education curricula, the Common Core standards, and CASEL’s social- emotional learning competencies.
Throughout the curriculum, college student volunteers introduce medically accurate health content in the areas of sexual health, substance abuse, and mental health to reinforce and deepen students’ skill development. Skills are developed using student-centered, inclusive, age-appropriate activities and scenarios that provide students with the opportunity to build self-efficacy and practice applying new content and skills. process with fictional characters making tough decisions about such topics as sex and substance use, and are asked to reflect on how they would approach similar situations.
About my class
Peer Health Exchange (PHE) is a national health equity nonprofit, and was originally founded by young people, for young people in 2003. Since our Chicago office opened in 2007, we’ve reached over 33,000 Chicago ninth graders and trained 3,000 college student volunteers across the city. Our skills-based health curriculum is informed by 15 years of experience, evidence-based best practices, and the findings from both internal and external evaluation. It has also been shaped by feedback from adolescent health and youth development experts, high school students, volunteers, and partners.
Peer Health Exchange Chicago will provide 120 ninth graders with access to our 14-workshop curriculum in which they practice skills in decision-making, designed to empower students to translate their knowledge into action. This focus on skill-building and the content of the curriculum are aligned with the National Health Education Standards, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s characteristics of effective health education curricula, the Common Core standards, and CASEL’s social- emotional learning competencies.
Throughout the curriculum, college student volunteers introduce medically accurate health content in the areas of sexual health, substance abuse, and mental health to reinforce and deepen students’ skill development. Skills are developed using student-centered, inclusive, age-appropriate activities and scenarios that provide students with the opportunity to build self-efficacy and practice applying new content and skills. process with fictional characters making tough decisions about such topics as sex and substance use, and are asked to reflect on how they would approach similar situations.
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