Adolescent Health: Think, Act, Grow® (TAG): Research to Action

Background:  Adolescent Health: Think, Act, Grow®– TAG – is a national call to action to improve adolescent health in the U.S through communication and stakeholder engagement. TAG builds on previous strategic initiatives in adolescent health and national health promotion efforts. TAG supports OAH and HHS strategic priorities including achievement of the Healthy People 2020 adolescent health objectives. TAG emphasizes a positive youth development approach that builds on young people’s strengths and prioritizes youth engagement. To develop TAG, OAH engaged experts from national organizations in six different youth-serving sectors, including groups that serve parents & teens directly. These stakeholders shaped the TAG framework, identified the Five Essentials for Healthy Adolescents, and proposed specific action steps and resources for professionals, organizations, family members, and teens to make these essentials a reality.   

Program background:  OAH coordinates adolescent health promotion and disease prevention programs and initiatives across HHS and works in partnership with other agencies to support evidence-based approaches to improve the health of adolescents. OAH serves as a reliable, timely source of information about adolescent health topics. Since 2015, OAH has disseminated information and tools through TAG with the goal of spurring actions at the national, state, community and family levels to promote adolescent health and healthy development. OAH invites stakeholders to join TAG to raise awareness and take action on one or more of the Five Essentials. TAG provides a range of tools that stakeholders can use including: the TAG Playbook, TAG in Action Successful Strategies, TAG Toolkit, the TAG Talks video series, and research reviews supporting the TAG Five Essentials.  OAH has partnered with several national organizations including the American Public Health Association and the Society for Adolescent Health & Medicine to promote TAG. Additionally, several state and city health departments have started to use TAG as a framework for their adolescent health initiatives.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  The TAG evaluation is designed to assess TAG objectives in order to tell the ongoing story of TAG implementation. The evaluation employs a sequential mixed methods design, involving two key phases that will repeat each year of the evaluation: 1) initial quantitative analysis of program metrics, and 2) a qualitative data collection & analysis phase that builds on and explores the findings from Phase 1. Through this sequential phased design, the quantitative results will be explained in more detail through the qualitative data. Overall, this sequential approach will help OAH identify successes as well as incorporate feedback back into TAG to make changes and improvements. Quantitative metrics will also be analyzed on a rolling basis to inform the ongoing qualitative design and analysis and address issues of continuous improvement. Currently ongoing, the first evaluation report is expected at the end of 2017. 

Conclusions:  While on-going, TAG has seen great initial interest and OAH continues to utilize feedback and evaluation to revise messaging and create buy-in from interested parties. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  Rather that utilizing a top-down approach, federal agencies may be able to better achieve their objectives by developing products with the input of stakeholders and utilizing partnerships at the local and national level.