FACES PHYC in Media!
Last month, Kaiser Health News reporter Heidi DeMarco visited our FACES program in Sacramento, CA, to observe the Public Health Youth Corps students in action! With youth opioid overdose deaths on the rise, Heidi wanted to learn more about how PHYC students are trained to use Narcan and become advocates for overdose prevention in their communities. She observed a workshop, interviewed students, and saw them in action conducting lunchtime outreach with their peers at Hiram Johnson High School. Thank you to Heidi and Kaiser Health News for highlighting the amazing work of our FACES Sacramento students!
Listen to the resulting Spanish radio segment on Radio Billingue, which featured an interview with our Founding Director, Dr. Tomas Magana, HERE (11/18, starting at 9:19).
California Healthline highlighted FACES Public Health Youth Corps in their article “Latino Teens Are Deputized as Health Educators to Sway the Unvaccinated.” Here’s what they had to say about us!
“It makes sense we should look to our youth as covid educators for their peers and families,” said Dr. Tomás Magaña, an assistant clinical professor in the pediatrics department at the University of California-San Francisco. “And when we’re talking about the Latino community, we have to think deeply and creatively about how to reach them.”
Some training programs use peer-to-peer models on campuses, while others teach teens to fan out into their communities. FACES for the Future Coalition, a public youth corps based in Oakland, is leveraging programs in California, New Mexico, Colorado, and Michigan to turn students into covid vaccine educators.
Check out the article on California Healthline HERE.
About FACES Public Health Youth Corps
In August 2021, FACES for the Future was awarded a grant (“Local Community-Based Workforce to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Access”) from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to support youth focused peer vaccine education. Leveraging our existing Public Health Youth Corps program, we are training FACES youth from our programs in California, New Mexico, Colorado and Michigan to become peer/near-peer COVID vaccine educators. Students will be trained how to talk to their friends, families and community members about the COVID vaccine and about other ways to stop the spread of COVID. Three-hundred FACES students will participate in the program and will be additionally supported with certifications in CPR/First Aid, Mental Health First Aid, Stop the Bleed training and Narcan/Opioid Overdose Intervention training.
We know that young people often serve as sources of information and advocacy for their families, and as such, can be an important resource for stopping the spread of COVID in our communities.
We want to thank all of our FACES program partners for working with us to support FACES students! Also thank you to Public Health Institute and our partners at CACHE for supporting our navigation of this award. And of course, thank to our partners at HRSA for believing in the power of young people as much as we do.