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Challenge: In our media-saturated society, young people need help to understand the role that media play in shaping their values about nutrition and physical activity, and to build skills that encourage critical thinking and healthy lifestyle choices. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) asked AED to assist with a multi-year media literacy initiative to address these important issues among young people ages 11
to 13.

Solution: AED developed an interactive-learning curriculum geared to youth in after-school programs.

The compelling part of this program is that the participants learn how to create their own media, which keeps young people excited about the program. In each lesson, they create a small-scale media project creating health messages based on what they learned earlier in the lesson.

Another key to this effort was that AED fostered and nurtured intensive collaborations with youth-serving organizations nationwide to gain their input and ensure that the resultant curriculum modules would be useful and usable – and most important, that they would be fun and engaging to youth.

Results: The curriculum was pilot-tested with a variety of youth-serving organizations around the country, with extremely positive results. AED also provided technical assistance to pilot sites implementing curriculum lessons and media production projects, and created a Web site for curriculum pilot-site facilitators to share experiences and provide feedback.

> Download the Media-Smart Youth project fact sheet (99 KB, PDF)

To learn more about these and other CHC programs, contact us.