Division of Adolescent and School Health (EIS 2018)

The mission of the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) is to promote environments where teens can gain fundamental health knowledge and skills, establish healthy behaviors for a lifetime, connect to health services, and avoid becoming pregnant or infected with HIV or STDs. DASH works in collaboration with education agencies to help schools implement evidence-based policies, programs, and practices to prevent behaviors and experiences that contribute to HIV and STD infection and unintended pregnancy among youth. DASH provides financial and technical assistance to departments of education and national organizations to monitor health behaviors and experiences and improve schools’ ability to provide health interventions with evidence of effectiveness in HIV, STD, and teen pregnancy prevention; link students to appropriate health services; and establish environments that increase school connectedness.

Areas of emphasis

• School-based surveillance of six categories of health risk behaviors among adolescents through implementation of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) at the national, state, and local levels: sexual risk behaviors, violence and unintentional injury, alcohol and other drug use, tobacco use, unhealthy dietary behaviors, and physical inactivity and sedentary behaviors, including trends in the prevalence of health risk behaviors over time.
• School-based surveillance of school health policies and practices at the national, state, school district, school, and classroom levels through implementation of the School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS) and School Health Profiles (Profiles).
• Analyses of YRBSS data to examine secular trends in sexual risk behaviors, violence-related behaviors, and substance use, as well as associations between these health risk behaviors.
• Analyses of YRBSS data on the prevalence and associations between sexual risk behaviors and other health risk behaviors among sexual minority adolescents.
• Analyses of health risk behaviors among students from developing countries using data from the Global Youth Risk Behavior Survey.