[The following final update was written by the organization and then sent to us for further sharing.]

As part of the LA2050 Grants Challenge, Peer Health Exchange proposed to deliver inclusive health education to over 3,000 young people in LA classrooms, and beyond the classroom, provide digital health solutions to over 10,000 of LA's young people.

We are pleased to report that the program was implemented successfully as outlined in the grant. Over the course of the grant period, we successfully achieved our objectives as outlined in the proposal:

• We reached 3,590 8th and 9th-grade students via our in-person health education workshops. The workshops were delivered by one full-time and five part-time paid PHE Fellows at 19 middle and high schools across Los Angeles county in communities including Aliso Village, Athens, Lincoln Heights, Eagle Rock, Lennox, Pacoima, San Fernando, Sylmar, and Watts.

• PHE engaged 7,755 unique selfsea users in the City of Los Angeles, and exceeded our goal to reach 10,000 young people in Los Angeles County.

• PHE partnered with (and equitably compensated!) young people to co-design our programs. Ten Los Angeles-based youth served on PHE’s Youth Advisory Board (YAB) and its four sub groups, which inform our in-person program design and evaluation, promote and shape selfsea, and carry out health equity advocacy projects.

PHE conducted pre- and post-testing of our in-person health workshops in Los Angeles, which measured outcomes related to participant ability to make health decisions and improve knowledge, skills, attitudes, and intentions (KSAI) around mental, sexual, and social health including substance misuse prevention. Overall, students reported feeling more confident in asking questions about their health, encouraging a friend to seek help in support of their mental health, and talking to a doctor or nurse when feeling unwell. Stand-out improvements include:

• An 85% increase in overall health knowledge

• A 56% increase in comfort choosing a type of pregnancy or STI prevention method • A 71% increase in confidence towards talking to a doctor or nurse

Qualitative evaluations conducted by PHE illustrate the impact of PHE’s programs on the knowledge and skills youth gained. One student shared, “I was able to learn how to regulate my emotions and how I respond to things with some of the tips the program gave out.” Another responded, “I learned how to feel more comfortable talking about sexual relationships.” A third shared, “I was able to express that I felt bothered and I don't really express that. It supported me by knowing more about more about mental health.”

PHE also evaluated selfsea for its ability to reach youth beyond classroom spaces in immediate ways and to measure help-seeking behaviors through accessing resources and information, namely through user click-through rates. We measured a 23% click-through rate (an indication of help-seeking behavior), achieving our goal of at least 20%. Selfsea’s most popular resources were: 7 Cups (free online mental health services), Crisis Text Line, Finding a Therapist, A Teenager's Guide to Dealing with Family Tension, and Black Emotional and Mental Health Journaling.

We made small adjustments to our health education curriculum during the grant period, including a slight reduction of discussion-based activities, an increase in interactive activities, and revisions to reduce repetition across workshops. In response to the need for multilingual workshops, we translated our curriculum materials and curricula facilitator guide to Spanish and Haitian Creole.

Thanks to feedback from the young people serving on our Youth Advisory Board, PHE developed an AI chat search feature for selfsea, accomplished in partnership with intuist AI. This tool will help make selfsea even more interactive and supportive. The chat feature is in beta testing as will be launched this year.

A grant from LA2050 has helped PHE to grow our impact in the greater Los Angeles region, supporting our work being highlighted in publications, at events, and in new partnerships nationwide. A few examples include:

• PHE’s work was mentioned in 18 articles.

• Children’s Hospital Los Angeles invited PHE to present on our work with selfsea at their annual conference, which resulted in a partnership with the CDC to bolster our evaluation work.

• Project Evident featured PHE as an exemplar in their report on the benefits of centering the lived experiences of community members in our work.

• The America Forward Coalition featured PHE’s working in their 2024 campaign paper, Imagine What’s Possible.

• PHE was awarded funding and membership to the Launch Innovation Accelerator, which was established to spark innovations in youth sexual health.

As a trusted partner in health education equity in Los Angeles, PHE will continue our work with young people through our in-person programs, digital health solutions, and youth leadership initiatives. We are grateful to the LA2050 Grant Challenge for making our continued, and expanded, impact possible.