A Step-by-Step Guide for Supporting Adolescent Health in Schools
July 14, 2026 | Sophia Durant
This is a practical guide designed to help state and territorial health agencies (S/THAs), education partners, school districts, and community stakeholders improve adolescent health outcomes through school-based strategies. Recognizing that schools are a critical setting for promoting health, prevention, and early intervention, this guide provides a structured, step-by-step process for using data to identify adolescent health needs, selecting priority areas, and developing actionable plans to support student well-being.
The resource is organized into three major parts to guide teams through understanding the adolescent health landscape and planning for meaningful, sustainable change.
Part 1. Assess: This section helps users identify and interpret adolescent health data from national, state, local, and school-based sources. It includes examples of these data sources, needs assessments, dashboards, and data summaries that can help identify trends, disparities, and opportunities for intervention. This section emphasizes the importance of translating data into accessible and actionable insights to support decision-making.
Part 2. Engage and Educate: This section focuses on using data to fuel collaboration. It provides guidance on building stakeholder workgroups, engaging existing partners, generating leadership buy-in, sharing data with stakeholders, and using structured approaches to collaboratively identify and prioritize adolescent health goals. It also supports teams in selecting evidence-based or evidence-informed interventions that align with both community needs and the school context. By centering collaboration, communication, and consensus-building, this section helps teams move from data review to strategic alignment.
Part 3. Action Plan: This section helps teams translate their priorities into implementation. It guides users through creating a SMART goal, identifying key strategies, and outlining specific action steps needed to move the work forward. It also emphasizes the importance of maintaining momentum, tracking progress, communicating updates, and treating the action plan as a living document that can evolve over time. There are practical tools (i.e., templates, example agendas, stakeholder mapping worksheets, and a sample action plan) throughout to support real-world application.
This guide equips teams with a clear framework for using data, collaboration, and evidence-informed planning to strengthen adolescent health in schools. By helping agencies and partners move from assessment to implementation, it supports more coordinated, and sustainable efforts to create school environments where young people can be healthy, supported, and ready to thrive.
Reviewed by Christi Mackie, Vice President, Community Health & Prevention; Sanaa Akbarali, Senior Director, Maternal & Child Health; Maria Gabriela Ruiz, MPH, Senior Analyst, Family and Child Health, ASTHO; and Shannon Vance, MPH, Director, Family & Child Health.