Peer Health Exchange
Peer Health Exchange is a 501(c)3 organization empowering teens to make healthy decisions. To do so, the organization trains college student volunteers to teach a skills-based health curriculum in public high schools in low-income communities that lack comprehensive health education. It is made up of college students in Boston, New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and the Bay Area who volunteer in public high schools to teach health education classes. The vision of Peer Health Exchange is that one day, all teens will have the knowledge and skills to make healthy decisions. [1]
Due to staffing shortages and budget cuts in public high schools, sexual and health education has suffered. To prevent growing trends in adolescents engaging in risky or harmful behavior in sexual and personal spheres of their lives, Peer Health Exchange (PHE) works to provide this education. The Peer Health Exchange website lists these statistics: one in six teenagers are overweight or obese [2], one in five sexually active teen girls becomes pregnant every year [5], half of all adolescents who continue smoking will die eventually from a smoking-related illness [7], one in five teenagers experiences violence in a relationship[3], each year one in four sexually-active young people contract an STI [4], and one in three teenagers is a binge-drinker[6].
In 1999, six graduates from Yale University began going into underfunded and understaffed public high schools in New Haven, Connecticut to teach health workshops. The founding members of this New Haven group, (which now reaches ten New Haven public schools with over 100 volunteers) established Peer Health Exchange, Inc in 2003. They brought their program to New York City first, training over 150 volunteers from Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University and reaching 1300 low-income high school students that would otherwise have not received any health education in school. In 2006, PHE launched a program in Boston, training college students from Boston University and Harvard College. In the 2006–2007 school year, PHE trained over 270 volunteers in Boston and New York City and reached 1,600 high school students. The program has also been extended into Chicago, Illinois, training college students from DePaul University, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and University of Illinois Chicago Campus. And to further its impact, in July 2007 PHE initiated a five-year growth plan to deepen impact in current cities and spread throughout the country to new sites, including Mills College, University of Southern California, California State University Northridge, St. Mary's College of California, and University of California, Berkeley.
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