Peer Health Exchange

Our Mission

Peer Health Exchange’s mission is to empower young people with the knowledge, skills, and resources to make healthy decisions.

We do this by training college students to teach a skills-based health curriculum in under-resourced high schools across the country.

Our Vision

Peer Health Exchange, with our partners, will advance health equity and improve health outcomes for young people.

Core Values

Our core values form the foundation of our organizational culture and guide our approach to achieving our mission and vision.

Health

We believe that all young people deserve equal access to the knowledge, skills, and resources that support their physical and mental well-being. In partnership with communities, we exist to help young people achieve more positive and equitable health outcomes.

Equity

We believe that all young people deserve equitable opportunities to learn about and act for their health. For our part in that work, we deliver a culturally appropriate, trauma-informed curriculum that focuses on the barriers facing the most marginalized youth. To do so, we address the effects of power and privilege in our work and strive to be anti-racist, anti-nationalist, anti-queerphobic, anti-transphobic, anti-sexist, anti-classist, and anti-ableist.

Agency

We believe in the potential of every young person. We work to empower young people to make active, informed choices about their health. In turn, we recognize the value each one of us brings to our work. We commit to making full use of our own agency as individuals and as an organization in service of our goals.

Communication

We rely on direct and honest exchange for all that we do. We value communication as essential to articulating our vision and goals, forming strong relationships, working through challenges, and learning from and with our young people and partners.

Impact

We know that achieving long-term success will require reflection, innovation, and sustained effort. To further our impact, we hold ourselves to meaningful and measurable outcomes, evaluate our successes and challenges openly, and act on what we learn.

History

In 1999, six Yale undergraduates began teaching health workshops in New Haven public schools in order to fill the gap left by an underfunded, understaffed district health program. In 2003, the founding members of the group established Peer Health Exchange to replicate this successful program in other communities with unmet health education needs. Since then, we have trained more than 8,500 college student volunteers to deliver effective health education to over 100,000 public high school students in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington, DC, seeing strong initial results.

Current High School Partners

Alliance Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science High School
Alliance Environmental Science and Technology High School
Alliance Health Services Academy High School
Big Picture Soledad Learning Academy
Environmental Charter High School
Green Dot Animo Inglewood Charter High School
Green Dot Animo South Los Angeles Charter High School
New Village Charter High SchoolPUC California Academy for Liberal Studies (CALS) Early College High School
PUC Community Charter Early College High School
PUC Early College Academy for Leaders and Scholars (eCALS)
PUC Lakeview Charter High School
PUC Nueva Esperanza
PUC Triumph Charter High School
USC East
USC Hybrid
Valor Academy
Vaughn International Studies Academy