AAP Announces $7.5 Million Investment to Address Integrated Care for Adolescents and Young Adults

ITASCA, IL— The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announces a federal grant of more than $7.5 million that will aid in the effort to combine systems of care – including health, school, and community systems – for adolescents and young adults.

The Maternal and Child Health Bureau, housed under the Health Resources and Services Administration, made the investment to the Comprehensive Systems Integration for Adolescent and Young Adult Health cooperative agreement. This project is designed to expand the reach of states, territories, and tribal organizations in joining services that promote youth well-being.

The Comprehensive Systems Integration for Adolescent and Young Adult Health project will be led by the National Coordinating Committee which comprises the AAP, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health/Got Transition (NA), the National Association of School Nurses (NASN), the National Council on Mental Wellbeing (NCMW), Y-USA, and Youth MOVE (Motivating Others through Voices of Experience) National.  

The Comprehensive Systems Integration for Adolescent and Young Adult Health project will use a health equity lens to meet the varied and unique needs of young people to: 

1. Establish a cross-sector alliance comprising nationally recognized partners in health, school, and community systems that will provide national leadership.
2. Support the cross-sector alliance to develop and disseminate a national blueprint to improve youth health and well-being through systems integration in states, territories, and tribal organizations.
3. Provide technical assistance to three teams of states, territories, or tribal organizations working to implement cross-sector systems integration models.
4. Deliver technical assistance to build the capacity of Title V agency related to improving the health of adolescents and young adults.
5. Deliver training and technical assistance to increase the number of state, territory, and tribal organizations offering integrated system models to improve youth health and well-being. 

According to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, some adolescents and young adults engage in substance use and risk-taking behaviors and experience violence, and mental health challenges.  The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated longstanding mental and emotional health issues such as acute sadness, suicide risk, and violence. Young people faced different barriers to physical and mental health services within the health care sector. They still report few preventive service visits and inadequate conversations regarding confidentiality and sensitive topics with providers, and studies show adolescents and young adults experience a lack of protection regarding their private health information. 

An integrated health services system is non-existent at the federal, state and community levels. This leads to young people and their families interacting with many different, siloed health, school, and community programs – each with different funding streams, requirements, and data-sharing protections. Consequently, adolescents and young adults are served later, often with worse physical, mental and emotional symptoms, and evidence-based treatment practices are inconsistently implemented in school and community settings.

“This significant investment from HRSA will allow AAP and its partners to develop strategies and resources to improve entities that adolescents and young adults interact with on a regular basis,” said Debra Waldron, MD, MPH, FAAP, principal investigator for the project. “Schools, health and community systems must work together and improve how our adolescents and young adults receive care.”

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.