The Adolescent and Young Adult Health National Resource Center kicked off its second cohort of states at the AYAH Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network (CoIIN) Summit on May 9-10. The AYAH CoIIN Summit brings together the seven new participating states (Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Washington and Wyoming) into one setting to learn more about what it means to be a part of a quality improvement collaborative, and to learn about evidence-based strategies to increase young people's access to preventive health services and to improve the quality of their health care.

The new CoIIN states learned about successes and strategies from the first cohort, collaborated in team-building activities, discussed action planning strategies for their quality improvement activities and engaged in presentations from a variety of adolescent and young adult health experts. Young adult leaders from the first cohort of states were instrumental in providing technical assistance to the new states on how to advance their youth engagement efforts.

Coffee Talk Series Explores Autism Awareness Issues

AMCHP's State Public Health Autism Resource Center (SPHARC) hosted an Autism Awareness Month coffee talk series throughout April and May that featured content experts around autism topical areas such as telehealth, youth engagement and employment. We have posted on our SPHARC website materials from two of the webinars: the "Telehealth and Autism" with Mei Kwong from the Center for Connected Health Policy, and "Kids as Self Advocates: Giving Youth a Platform to Lead" with Matthew Shapiro of Kids as Self Advocates materials. We are working on posting the materials for the most recent coffee talk, on "Employment and Autism," so please stay tuned!