Peer Health Exchange

Peer Health Exchange (PHE) is a national health education nonprofit with sites in 15 cities across the country, including Chicago. It partners with local colleges and universities to recruit college student volunteers to teach its health curriculum in under-resourced schools. The college student volunteers leverage their GenZ status to foster trust and engage in authentic conversations on sexual health, mental health, and substance misuse prevention with middle- and high-school students. As schools transitioned to remote learning in March 2020 and the dual pandemics of structural racism and COVID-19 increased the need for mental health services, especially for youth of color, PHE developed a suite of virtual tools and resources, including a mobile app, to provide mental health services and supports to youth where they are. This flexible support grant enables the Chicago office of Peer Health Exchange (PHE-Chicago) to reach 4,550 young people through its school-based programming this year and engage tens of thousands of more young people in the region through its new direct-to-youth mobile app. Over the long-term, PHE’s goal is to increase young people’s health knowledge, encourage help-seeking behaviors, connect young people to care, and activate youth to advocate for their own health and that of their communities.