Get ready! It's Pennsylvania Teen Health Week!

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Laura Offutt, MD, whose digital health resource, Real Talk with Dr. Offutt, developed Teen Health Week in collaboration with the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Department of Health with support from the Pennsylvania Medical Society. Laura is a volunteer internal medicine physician, youth mentor and advocate who uses social media and her blog-based website to engage adolescents with teen-friendly, accurate health information.
Get ready! This week is Pennsylvania Teen Health Week! As proclaimed by Governor Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania Teen Health Week to focuses on the overall health of teenagers from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and everywhere in between. Pennsylvania is the first and only state to have such a statewide proclamation and observance – but soon Teen Health Week will be a national celebration!
It’s easy to be a part of this special week. Involvement can be as simple as hanging a flyer announcing the week in your school, church or community center, or wearing lime green, the official color of Teen Health Week. We even have a toolkit which is full of easy ideas for activities, sample social media posts, and a variety of resources which are organized around the broad themes covered in the week.
Each day has a specific broad health focus:
Monday: Healthy Diet and Exercise
Tuesday: Violence Prevention
Wednesday: Mental Health
Thursday: Sexual Development and Healt h
Friday: Substance Use and Abuse
Why is Teen Health Week important? Well, did you know that in Pennsylvania more than a third of our young feel depressed or sad most days? Or that many teens think that driving after smoking marijuana is safer than after drinking? Or that 1 in 3 high school students have been in an abusive relationship? Or that fewer than one-tenth of our teens broke a sweat for one short hour in the past week? And that fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds account for nearly half of the cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea in Pennsylvania?
As you can see, there are plenty of good reasons to have a week focused on teen health here in Pennsylvania!
Don’t worry – it’s not too late to take part in this fun and special week! Here are a few ideas of how you can be a part of it:
Wear lime green. It’s the official Teen Health Week color.
Get artsy. Use post-it notes and set up a New Year’s Resolution wall that week – where teens can put anonymous health resolutions for 2017! You know, like “eat a fruit every day.” Or, “make sure to get enough sleep.”
Hashtag for health. Share or post educational announcements or social media posts focused on each day’s health theme with friends or students. (Find these in the toolkit, or on SafeTeens’ social media channels.)
Help us celebrate! Attend the kick-off at the State Capitol Building in Harrisburg on January 9th, or the Friday the 13th celebration at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.
Plus, there are a lot more easy and fun ideas already created for you in our toolkit!