Greetings from the HYD-PRC!
This newsletter explores recent work of our HYD-PRC faculty, staff, and community partners. Please read the important article about our recent transition in PRC leadership. Our newsletter will explore how to increase and normalize adolescent time alone with clinicians, look at engaging oral health care providers as HPV vaccine advocates, and highlight promoting COVID-19 vaccine confidence and access among youth experiencing homelessness.
We wish each of you the very best in your daily work and advocacy on behalf of young people.
Rebecca Shlafer
Director, Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center
PRC Leadership Transition
Dear friends and colleagues of our HYD-PRC,
I am excited to announce that my longtime colleague, Dr. Rebecca Shlafer, has agreed to step into my recent role as the Director for the University of Minnesota’s Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center.
Normalizing Adolescent Time Alone with their Primary Care Clinician
Time alone between health care clinicians and adolescent patients is a core element of quality adolescent primary care; however, recent estimates suggest that less than half of adolescents receive time alone during preventative visits. If expectations for the visit are unclear, the situation that may leave parents/guardians and adolescents asking, “Is this normal for my teen?” “Is this normal for me?” “Why do they need time alone? Is there a problem?”
Oral Health Providers as HPV Vaccine Advocates
You may have heard your doctor or your teen’s doctor talk about the HPV vaccine. But have you ever heard your dentist talk about it? And since HPV infection is a leading cause of preventable head and neck cancer, why aren’t oral health care providers talking about it?
Promoting Confidence and Access to COVID-19 Vaccination Among Young People Experiencing Homelessness
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccine rollout, HYD-PRC researchers Janna Gewirtz O’Brien, Renee Sieving, Ingie Osman, Katie Pierson, and team collaborated with an interdisciplinary, cross-sector team to develop and implement a series of interventions aimed at increasing COVID-19 vaccine confidence and access among youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) in Hennepin County, MN.
PRC Highlights, Events & Resources
- PRC SIP: DiscoverU Featured at PRC Week 2023
- Longtime Community Advisory Board Co-Chair Gabriel McNeal Transitions to New Role
- Shlafer Awarded "Julie Ross Faculty Recognition Award"
- MPR's "For Jailed Parents, In-Person Visits with Children are Rare" Interviews Shlafer
- UMN LEAH Program Looking for New Program Manager
- 2023 Adolescent Health Summer Institute
- Minneapolis Urban Initiative
- And more!