Shaping Healthy Communities: Unleashing the Power of Youth
In a time of rapid change, young people are navigating uncertainty and feelings of disconnection. However, one thing remains clear - community is a powerful source of health, well-being, and fulfillment. Strong communities are built on three core pillars: relationships, purpose, and civic action.
At the 2025 Adolescent Health Summer Institute, we will explore how to strengthen these pillars with and for our young people. How can we foster youth-adult relationships that nurture connection? How can we inspire youth-led social action that drives collective growth? How can we harness young people’s purpose and passion and partner with them to create healthier communities – now and in the future? Join us at the 2025 Summer Institute and become a catalyst for positive change as we work together to build stronger, more connected communities where all young people can thrive.
Who should attend?
All who work with young people - teachers, counselors, physicians, social workers, dietitians, mentors, coaches, school nurses, public health nurses and nurse practitioners, health educators, psychologists, school district personnel, youth ministers, religious leaders, law enforcement, policymakers, youth workers, youth advocates, and community leaders.
Day 1 - Laying the Foundation: Grounding in Connection, Healing & Youth Power
Practice tools for mindfulness, healing & resilience with youth leaders.
Examine youth empowerment processes & how these processes can result in positive youth development, adolescent health & well-being.
Recognize the roles that adults play in the lives of young people, from disempowering to empowering, and apply empowering strategies to specific projects.
Discover how youth engagement and leadership flourish when young people are given the tools to express themselves, are affirmed in their identities, and are supported by caring adults and inclusive institutions.
Day 2 - From Awareness to Action: Centering Justice, Systems Change & Youth Voice
Examine the Radical Healing framework & explain how it expands beyond traditional models of mental health by addressing systemic injustices impacting youth well-being.
Analyze state and national calls to action designed to help create coordinated systems, services and supports that increase youth agency and youth engagement.
Describe key opportunities, supports & challenges to youth engagement and leadership based on insights shared by young people.
Day 3 - Helpful Tools and Hard Truths: Building Authentic Youth-Adult Partnerships
Explore the structure & core elements of a successful youth-adult partnership.
Describe concerns, preferences & realities of young people in health, mental health & educational settings.
Develop confidence in forming successful youth-adult partnerships.
Identify & apply frameworks that enable youth-serving professionals to effectively support youth engagement & leadership.
Day 1 Speakers
Irreducible Grace Foundation | Black Youth Healing Arts Center
The Irreducible Grace Foundation (IGF) is a non-profit focused on creating safe spaces with youth of color. IGF provides mentoring, life skills, employment, self-care practices, and safe space for teens and young adults. Through the use of visual and performing arts and movement techniques we help young people learn new skills for dealing with stress, trauma and fostering their voice.
The Black Youth Healing Arts Center (BYHAC) is a safe space in Saint Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood for Black youth to receive healing for their un/under-processed historical trauma. BYHAC provides cultural, ancestral, and innovative processes to healing for Black youth foremost, while creating safe spaces and healing opportunities for youth of color.
Marc Zimmerman
Marc A. Zimmerman is the Marshall H. Becker Collegiate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity in the School of Public Health, and a Professor of Psychology and the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan. He is also the Co-Director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. Zimmerman’s research has focused on community-based strategies for promoting positive adolescent development and the application of resiliency and empowerment theory.
Kao Kalia Yang
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American teacher, speaker, and writer. Her work crosses audiences and genres. Yang will help the audience discover how youth engagement and leadership flourish when young people are given the tools to express themselves, are affirmed in their identities, and are supported by caring and inclusive institutions. She is the award-winning author of several memoirs including, The Latehomecomer, The Song Poet, Somewhere in the Unknown World, and Where Rivers Part. Her books, The Rock in My Throat, and Caged center on Hmong children and families who live in our world, who dream, hurt, and hope in it.
Day 2 Speakers
Maria Veronica Svetaz
Maria Veronica Svetaz is a Latine family physician in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Hennepin Healthcare, and an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Originally from Argentina, she has designed and currently directs the Aqui Para Ti/Here for You (APT) youth development program along with Between Us, an inter-departmental program for Comprehensive Sexual Health care and support for parents. Last year, she launched the Radical Healing Initiative, extending the APT model to the other core adolescents served by Hennepin Healthcare: African American and African adolescents. Her research focuses on parenting Latino adolescents, transitions of care, CBPR (community-based participatory research), and health equity for adolescents and all.
Mariah Geiger-Williams
Mariah Geiger-Williams is the State Adolescent Health Coordinator at the Minnesota Department of Health and coordinates the Minnesota Partnership for Adolescent and Young Adult Health, a unifying vision for adolescents thriving in the state. Her past experiences include Early Adolescent Health Consultant at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and Public Health Associate at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mariah credits much of her public health career to serving as a Youth Board member in a previous statewide movement for adolescent health, Catalyst Minnesota. Now as an adult, she is passionate about supporting youth engagement and leadership. She also strives to create systems change toward health equity to ensure every young person can thrive.
Day 3 Speakers
Erica Koepsel
Erica Koepsel is the Director of Youth Engagement at PATCH, where she cultivates impactful adolescent health and well-being programs through direct youth collaboration and adult coaching, building upon a career dedicated to sexual health education. Her experience spans diverse adolescent groups with a focus on holistic sexual health education and curriculum development.
Providers and Teens Communicating for Health (PATCH) Youth Workshop (led by youth)
Providers and Teens Communicating for Health (PATCH) is an innovative, youth-driven program working to improve adolescents' health and well-being across the nation. Wisconsin PATCH is made up of a collaboration of PATCH teams from across the state and is part of the larger PATCH vision. We work in communities across Wisconsin to educate, engage, and empower young people to take control of their own health and we believe that health care practices, programs, and policies should be developed with young people rather than just for them.
Ross Velure Roholt
Ross VeLure Roholt is Associate Professor, School of Social Work (Youth Studies) at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses on youth development, youth work, and civic youth work. He is an active community-based participatory researcher and evaluator. His research and evaluation work focuses on youth engagement, youth work, civic youth work, and youth involvement in democratic and social development, especially with young people from historically marginalized and contested communities. Currently, his research focus is on youth leadership transitions, exploring the pathways, opportunities, and youth work practices that invite and sustain young people's leadership in organizations and communities.