YouthCHAT Program

YouthCHAT is an innovative, youth-engaged approach for training current and future health care professionals who strive to provide developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, trauma informed and strengths based adolescent health care services.

• YouthCHAT Educators are adolescents and young adults representing diverse backgrounds and lived experience who are trained to act as simulated patients for adolescent health professional trainees.
• YouthCHAT Educators develop “characters” who participate in simulated clinical interviews with pediatric medical residents, nursing students, and other interdisciplinary adolescent health professionals-in-training. Educators provide feedback to the trainees about their strengths as well as areas for growth in the clinical  interview simulation.
• The primary goal of YouthCHAT is to help healthcare professionals hone their interviewing skills and improve their communication skills with adolescents and young adults. YouthCHAT Educators take pride in knowing that these interactions help future practitioners feel more comfortable with adolescent patients and ultimately provide better, more compassionate care to young people.