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About Health Initiatives for Youth

MISSION: Health Initiatives for Youth is a multicultural organization whose mission is to improve the health and well-being of underserved young people through innovative youth leadership, popular education and advocacy, in pursuit of multi-level social change. HISTORY: HIFY was founded in 1992 by a team of health care and youth service professionals in response to the immediate need for HIV prevention, treatment, and care for young people in San Francisco. As a first-of-its-kind organization, some of HIFY’s achievements from the 1990s include: creating two celebrated youth publications (including a resource manual) for youth living with HIV, offering four HIV-specific trainings for youth service providers, and developing an HIV-positive speaker’s bureau to help educate young people about the disease. In the early 2000s, HIFY began to look at the bigger picture of the lives of young people, as well as the supports and opportunities available to them. We now view HIV and health from a more holistic point of view, addressing many of the co-factors that put people at greater risk for infection. Because HIV is one of a broad matrix of interconnected health issues confronting youth, we have expanded our services to address additional risks to healthy development faced by all youth; populations including LGBTQIQ, POC, incarcerated, working class and poor youth, and newcomer ESL youth. In the process, we have acquired a wealth of experience on how best to serve a richly diverse community of young people. PROGRAMMING & TRAININGS: Our diverse group of health educator/trainers provide programming to middle school and high school aged youth throughout both San Francisco and Alameda counties. HIFY also offers both intensive professional development trainings for providers, as well as youth workshops on a variety of topics. All HIFY curricula are rooted in our four guiding philosophies: Positive Sexuality, Harm Reduction, Anti-Oppression and Youth Development.

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