Adolescent Champion Model
Helping You Help Youth
The Adolescent Champion Model is a multi-faceted intervention to address a health organization’s environment, policies, and practices to ensure that all aspects of your service are youth-centered.
Download a PDF overview of the Adolescent Champion Model
AHI developed the Adolescent Champion Model to drive health centers to become adolescent-centered medical homes. The Champion Model is a multi-faceted intervention to address a health center’s environment, policies, and practices to ensure that all aspects of a visit to the health center are youth-centered. Individualized trainings and check-ins with AHI staff are scheduled virtually to fit your staff's busy schedule.
Participants who complete the process are recognized and can become certified as an Adolescent-Centered Environment, earning them a gold, silver, or bronze rating based on their outcomes and joining a nation-wide network of youth-friendly practitioners. Every two years, they will have the opportunity to re-certify and recommit to their journey as Adolescent Champions.
If you are enrolled in the Adolescent Champion Model, log in below to access the Adolescent Champion Resources using the password provided by your consultant. Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions.
Impact by the numbers
Reporting
80% of the Adolescent Champion sites reported improvements of the following:
- Total number of adolescent visits
- Number of preventive care visits
- Number of behavioral/mental health visits
- Number of behavioral referrals
*All data based on improvements made between baseline and project-end
The Adolescent Champion Model includes
- The Adolescent-Centered Environment Assessment Process (ACE-AP), a comprehensive assessment process addressing an organization’s youth-friendliness
- Quality improvement initiatives focused on best practices in adolescent health care and HEDIS measures
- Spark trainings, or pre-packaged mini-trainings, for staff and providers on adolescent-centered care
- Patient, staff, and provider evaluations to assess improvement throughout the process
- Tailored technical assistance, training, and resources to reduce barriers to change and increase opportunities for success
- Maintenance of Certification Part IV to improve the delivery of confidential care
- The ACM is available both for single sites and cohorts of 3-5 clinics who embark on their journey in community. For cohorts, there will also be an in-person summit to come together and share learning!
The Adolescent Champion Model has received awards from the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, Society for Teachers of Family Medicine, Healthy Teen Network, and Michigan Medicine for its innovative approach to improving adolescent health care.
Adolescent Champions
Adolescent Champions demonstrate significant improvement in the following areas:
- Adolescent patient satisfaction
- Staff perception of adolescent-centered care provided
- Provider comfort and confidence in caring for adolescents
- Provider and staff knowledge of and attitudes toward confidentiality and minor consent laws
Impact of the Adolescent Champion Model
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What partners are saying
"The program helped me explain to parents why patient confidentiality is so important. Now the parents have no problem with their teens talking to the doctor directly.”
“I love that the model really gives a voice to an often unheard age group. Through the Adolescent Champion Model, we quickly identified and corrected weaknesses in our adolescent care. Completing the process left myself, the staff, and most importantly, our adolescent patients empowered.”
We can help!
Become an Adolescent Champion! We facilitate the Adolescent Champion Model with health centers across the United States. Contact us.
