Youth Advocates for Health (YA4-H!)

WHAT is Youth Advocates for Health?

Youth Advocates for Health (YA4-H! / “yay 4-H”) is a 4-H leadership program that empowers teens to make a difference in their community by exploring and helping solve community issues.

Teen interns typically work 2-3 hours per week within the YA4-H! club in a team with WSU faculty, staff, and 4-H volunteers to learn about these important issues, brainstorm local solutions and then take action by completing a teen-led community project. Members also have opportunities to apply for paid WSU internships, travel, attend leadership conferences, rack up resume-boosting volunteer hours, and more.

In past years, YA4-H! Teens have researched and taken action to support food/nutrition wellness, activity living (physical health/exercise), opioid-misuse, and vaccine outreach.  

From 2014-2021, our nutrition and active living work has reached nearly 3,000 community members through in-person educational outreach campaigns like classroom lessons and take-home kits for K-5th grade students, and public events, like 4-H Family Hike Night.  

“I would probably still be buying more junk foods then needed not really caring about my health and not exactly helping my family with their health [if I hadn’t been in YA4-H!].” 

From 2020-2021, YA4-H! teens chose to focus their research on opioid misuse and created a social media and printed poster campaign highlighting the dangers associated with opioids, which generated over 2,505 engagements. Check out this WSU Insider article to learn more about their work. 

“I never realized how hard recovery is. … This project helped us all realize that this is not a simple issue—it’s extremely complicated. I’m going to keep doing my part by helping people learn be more compassionate and give that helping hand.” 

From 2021-2022, YA4-H! teens partnered with the CDC and WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences to develop an online resource page, media campaigns, and an educational workshop on mRNA vaccines and vaccine equity within farmworker communities. Our local team supported educational events and reached nearly 6,500 community members through print media, email campaigns, and social media.  

The teens delivered their educational workshop to peers and adults at the National 4-H Healthy Living Summit. These in-person workshops included a “fill-in-the-blank” comic book designed by the teens and interactive games that taught participants about mRNA vaccine science (A crowd favorite!). 

How can my club or program get involved? 

Contact Alison White, 4-H Youth Development Regional Specialist 

alison.white@wsu.edu / 509-707-8066 call/text