Peer Health Exchange

Boston Director: Molly Greene

Website: www.peerhealthexchange.org

Peer Health Exchange (PHE) is the third organization that the GreenLight Fund is helping to expand into the Boston area. Peer Health Exchange gives teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy decisions by training college students to teach a comprehensive health curriculum in public high schools that lack health education.

The Need
Peer Health Exchange addresses a growing crisis among teenagers: Teenagers today are engaging in risky behavior that harms their bodies and their futures.

• One in nine Boston teenagers reports being the victim of physical violence perpetrated by a dating partner every year.

• One in eight Boston teenagers smokes cigarettes.

• One in seven Boston teenagers is overweight or obese.

• One in six Boston teenagers is a binge-drinker.

• One in five sexually active Boston teen girls becomes pregnant every year.

In recent years, public school budget cuts and staffing shortages have exacerbated this crisis by eliminating comprehensive health courses, leaving teenagers unprepared to protect themselves against these serious health risks. Teenagers who engage in risky behavior today are less likely to stay and excel in school, join and remain part of the workforce, and become healthy adults capable of producing healthy families.

The Peer Health Exchange Response

Peer Health Exchange addresses this need by:

• Partnering with public high schools that lack health education and in which the majority of the students live at or below the poverty line. These students experience a disproportionate number of serious health risks ranging from teenage pregnancy to obesity.

• Training college students to teach a comprehensive health curriculum in these schools. As slightly older peers, PHE Volunteers provide the benefits of peer education while also conveying the advantages of traditional instruction. They deliver health information to teenagers in a language and context that is relevant to their everyday experiences, yet they can also serve as role models, demonstrating healthy behaviors and the successful transition from high school to college.

• Giving teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy decisions. In the classroom, trained PHE college student volunteers help high school students articulate their values and goals, learn basic, accurate health information, practice decision-making and communication skills, and identify and learn how to use the health resources in their communities.

• Fostering a commitment to public service in college students.

Impact

PHE has several indicators of success in giving teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy decisions. In evaluations completed at the end of the 2005-2006 academic year:

• Over 80% of PHE high school students said they will use something they learned from PHE workshops to make a healthy decision in the future, and nearly 45% of PHE high school students said they had already used something they learned from PHE workshops to make a healthy decision during the six months in which the program ran.

• PHE high school students made statistically significant increases in their health knowledge, with a nearly 20% improvement from Pre-Test to Post-Test.

• 100% of high school principals who participated in the 2005-2006 program said they would recommend the program to other schools.

• Over 90% of PHE volunteers said they would recommend PHE to other college students.

Boston Growth

In 2006, PHE launched its program in Boston by recruiting, selecting, and training volunteers at Boston University and Harvard College to teach PHE’s comprehensive health curriculum in seven partner public high school sites. During the 2006-2007 academic year, PHE is reaching 650—more than 10% of—ninth grade students in Boston Public Schools. In the next five years, PHE aims to teach up to 6,000 students each year in order to reach the great majority of Boston’s 5,800 ninth graders and possibly those in other nearby communities.