This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
What risky behaviors do teens engage in?
Providing assistance with the collection of data on adolescent health
Challenge
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wants to help identify risk behavior among youth to help guide efforts to reduce these behaviors and improve health outcomes of the nation’s adolescents and young adults.
Through cooperative agreements with the CDC, state, territorial, and local education and health agencies conduct school-based surveillance through implementation of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and School Health Profiles (Profiles).
Solution
Westat provides technical assistance to more than 70 local, state, and tribal governments to conduct the surveys, including
- Creating and disseminating handbooks and technical assistance materials with high-quality graphics to funded sites to help plan and conduct the surveys
- Ensuring that the surveys use scientifically selected samples that represent the target populations
- Reviewing questionnaires
- Producing customized Profiles reports for funded sites
Results
State and local education and health agencies are using results from the YRBS to
- Raise awareness of the kinds of risk behaviors in which adolescents engage
- Develop programs that address health-risk behaviors
- Guide school health education teacher training and instructional programs
- Support health-related policies and legislation
- Seek funding for school health programs
State and local education and health agencies are using results from the Profiles to
- Compare school health policies and practices across states, large urban school districts, and U.S. territories
- Determine how well schools address the health and safety needs of their students
- Develop and implement school health policies
- Plan professional development for school staff
- Identify what health education topics and skills are taught in schools
-
Issue Brief
Young Children’s Consumption of 100% Fruit Juice by Racial-Ethnic Characteristics of Their MothersMarch 2023
Congress authorized the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) as a pilot program in 1972 and made WIC permanent in 1974.…
-
Perspective
CDISC Conformance and Compliance: So Many Resources, So Little Time!February 2023
Implementing the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) standards required for data management, programming, documentation, and eCTD data submission can be challenging for many reasons…
-
Expert Interview
How Will the Marine Corps Integrate Men and Women at Recruit Training?January 2023
Marine Corps recruit training is every bit as intense as it looks. Each morning starts hours before sunrise with a chorus of screaming drill instructors…