Interconnected influences on youth wellness and the value of youth-engaged decision making

At its core, a Youth Wellness Zone is about connecting resources and services across the continuum of supports that impact youth wellness and ensuring youth are at the heart of this planning.

After identifying community and youth priorities, the Greater Parkland YWZ created an ecological planning framework to assess strengths across five levels of prevention: built environment (safe spaces, parks, transportation and food), universal prevention (school and community trainings, afterschool activities), focused support (family programs and assistance), accessible treatment (screening, referral and follow up), and crisis prevention (school-based diversion, mobile crisis teams). Specific approaches for each stage of prevention were outlined in a long-term vision statement.

The YWZ then pulled together succinct and actionable next steps to take in partnership with organizations that were identified as already serving the Greater Parkland region.

Capacity to implement continuous quality improvement and evaluation methods

The YWZs know the value of checking their assumptions about what will best meet the community's needs. The ability to change course, improve a strategy, and reflect on wins AND losses is core to its work.

Yakima Valley Partners for Education assumed a parent mindfulness class would be a welcome program for families struggling to meet their children's mental health needs. In implementation, the YWZ found that some of the assertions of the mindfulness program clashed with the religious beliefs of many of the participating families. The YWZ reflected and retooled. They then reached out to parents to develop wording and practices that were more inclusive of local religious and cultural worldviews.

Number and representativeness of individuals participating in planning and programs

An indication of a YWZ's maturity is not just how well it can connect public and private agencies serving the community but how well it reaches and engages the community in active planning and implementation.

Yakima Valley Partners for Education estimated approximately 1,100 residents attended cultural events and mindfulness trainings (a fraction of the events, resources, and activities sponsored by partners) as part of local YWZ activities.

Degree of felt ownership among diverse sectors of the community

At the end of the day, the YWZ is about creating a sense of community identity and ownership around local youth wellness. To do this, a YWZ needs to communicate how it is being responsive to community and youth priorities, working on behalf of the community and engendering a sense of community ownership, a “we did this together” ethos.

Renton Innovation Zone Partnership identified social isolation as a major stressor for youth given local community challenges in the safety of the built environment, transportation challenges, and lack of broad access to enrichment activities in the local community. They addressed this need by building a sense of belonging where most kids were already, at school, while collaborating in larger policy discussions about the need for safer, more accessible transportation.

“It really did boil down to: can we put opportunities in place for them to make a friend and increase their sense of belonging?”

In the YWZ in Spokane, a youth highlighted how the work they did made them feel:

Degree to which the YWZ strategy reflects an understanding of how activities connect to impact

The capacity to absorb and act on knowledge is one of the most important elements of achieving sustained success in YWZs. YWZs ask themselves, is this the most impactful effort we could be supporting?

Looking to the future

The Youth Wellness Zone Collaborative continues to support each other and advocate for policy changes, shift systems towards human- and neighborhood-centric practices, and share our learnings with others interested in this approach.