With the Title V MCH Services Block Grant transformation, many states are focusing on National Performance Measure #10, the percent of adolescents aged 12-17 with a well-visit in the past year. The National Adolescent and Young Adult Health National Resource Center ("AYAH-NRC") – supported by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) – was established in September 2014 to help state improve receipt and quality of preventive services among adolescents and young adults, with a special focus on efforts to address this measure.
The AYAH-NRC is housed at the National Adolescent and Young Adult Information Center (known as "NAHIC" to many in the AMCHP community), at the University of California, San Francisco, in close partnership with:
- Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs
- University of Minnesota State Adolescent Health Resource Center
- University of Vermont National Improvement Partnership Network
How does the AYAH-NRC help states?
The AYAH-NRC work is organized around five areas: access; quality; integration; equity; and accountability. In our first year, our primary focus has been on launching the Adolescent and Young Adult Health Collaborative Improvement & Innovation Network (AYAH CoIIN). Outside the CoIIN, we've been developing tools and resources and leading workshops and webinars for states and other partners. Following the successful CoIIN Summit in September, we are focusing on creating tools and technical assistance for all interested states.
A quick glance at our resources:
Available now! - Two-page fact sheet on evidence base for AYA preventive services.
- Clinical tools for delivering preventive services to young adults (click here for the 2013 version, updated 2015 version coming very soon).
- Comparison of rates of preventive services across national surveys.
- Annotated list of national data sets with health care access and utilization data for adolescents and young adults.
- Presentations from the CoIIN Summit in September 2015: covering access, youth engagement, quality improvement, and lots more!
Coming very soon!
- A compendium of promising strategies to improve access to care and increase receipt of preventive visits, based on interviews with high-performing states (for an overview of promising strategies, click here).
- A "menu of measures" for projects in clinical practices to improve health care for adolescents and young adults.
- Skills-building session at AMCHP, Saturday morning, Jan. 23. The session will address: health care needs and experiences, youth health care literacy, leveraging missed health care opportunities, youth‐centered care, incentivizing and training providers, and more.
- A spiffed up website.
Over the next months, visit our website and stay tuned for information, as we create resources and provide assistance to state MCHB programs and their partners. Visit our booth at AMCHP and let us know how we can help!
For yet more information – browse the AYAH-NRC website: from there you can link to a range of tools and resources from all four partners and learn a little more about us.