National Institute for Reproductive Health - Adolescent Health Care Communication Project

Adolescent Health Care Communication Program (AHCCP)

The National Institute recognizes that when it comes to health care, doctors and teens don’t always speak the same language. While any efforts to inform health care providers about the unique needs of adolescents are valuable, teenagers themselves are the population best equipped to offer providers accurate and authentic information, advice, and insight about adolescent experiences, concerns, and preferences.

The Adolescent Health Care Communication Program(AHCCP) has shown that when trained teenagers are given the opportunity to work directly with health care providers, the teens are empowered, becoming more confident and well-informed health care consumers, and the providers gain privileged access to the perspectives of their target population; the providers learn how to better connect with their adolescent patients, while the teens realize that they can trust physicians to help them make healthy, smart choices.

AHCCP Expansion Project

The National Institute awarded grants to three groups in 2008 to develop and implement the AHCCP in their communities. Including the TORCH Program in New York, there are now four groups across the country implementing the AHCCP. To learn more click here.

Read about the first AHCCP Symposium, help on May 5, 2009.

The Program

To create a program in which adolescents and health care providers could jointly work to improve their communication, the National Institute for Reproductive Health’s Adolescent Health Care Communication Program (AHCCP) created two projects designed and led by adolescents:

The Adolescent-Provider Communication Workshops (APCW) were informed by the traditional medical practice of grand rounds. AHCCP features one such workshop for teens and one for health care providers.

Adolescent Standardized Patient Project (ASPP) grew out of the increasing use of standardized patients in all areas of medical education.

Both practices were preconceived to put adolescents in the driver’s seat, as workshop facilitators and standardized patients.Through these two projects, providers of adolescent health care gain the opportunity to interface directly with their target population, and benefit from the insight and advice that trained teens can offer. In addition teens learn how to access better health care.