GOALS & OBJECTIVES
Two main goals have been established to accomplish the task of training leaders in adolescent health for the future. Goal One: Graduate Education: To support the development, enhancement, and improvement of family centered, culturally appropriate, and community-based care for adolescents and their families in a wide geographic area by providing interdisciplinary leadership training of health professionals at the graduate and post-graduate levels in a model center of excellence in training, research and service. Goal Two: Continuing Education, Consultation, and Technical Assistance: To provide technical assistance/consultation, continuing education and collaboration to child health agencies and MCH health and related care professionals at the national, regional, state and community levels that is responsive to agency needs and that will enhance capacity to provide and/or assure the provision of integrated, family-centered, community-based, culturally appropriate care for adolescents (emphasis will be placed on Title V and MCH agencies/professionals but will also include all entitlement programs as well as public and private agencies engaged in health care and advocacy for adolescents).

METHODOLOGY
This interdisciplinary LEAH project provides didactic and experiential activities in four major domains: clinical, community, public health and research. The didactic component includes a once a week class, which covers a variety of medical, nutritional and psychosocial topics. Trainees are expected to have read selected materials prior to the class and are provided with network links to pertinent sites. On-line classes and lectures are being developed to enable faculty to provide distance education. A major emphasis is to increase the opportunities for health department employees to access these materials. Also included each week is a seminar series that includes both long and short-term trainees. The seminar series includes case studies and journal clubs with focus areas that include medical informatics, leadership training, and public speaking. During the past year the four MCHB programs at UAB have implemented a common schedule of lectures and seminars that is distributed through a listserv to all faculty and trainees. Long-term trainees/fellows with leadership potential are recruited from five disciplines (medicine, nursing, nutrition, psychology, social work). Special emphasis is placed on recruitment of minority trainees/fellows. This is done through partnerships with historically black colleges and Hispanic organizations in the southeast. Each of the trainees completes a one-year program except for the medical fellow who will be part of the project for three years in compliance with requirements for eligibility for subspecialty certification in adolescent medicine and the psychology trainee who will complete a two-year post-doctorate program. Recruitment of trainees with leadership potential is a priority of all MCHB programs at UAB and as a result there has been a collaborative effort to accomplish this priority. Clinical services include hospital-based in-patient and out-patient care including primary care and specialty clinics (e.g., adolescent GYN, eating disorders, diabetes, sports medicine). Community-based clinical activities include rural health clinics, juvenile justice facilities, and health departments. Recently, a new church-based initiative within the Division of General Pediatrics/Adolescent Medicine has begun which aims to implement a program emphasizing positive youth development through a weight management/physical activity program. As the State of Alabama’s Maternal and Child Health Division at the Department of Public Health begins to move away from primary care, faculty and trainees will help in establishing the community based resource centers for each county with an emphasis on county services for adolescents. Research training will include classes available throughout the University as well as assistance from designated research mentors. Additionally, UAB’s newly created Center for Advancement of Youth Health, which is a research center in the area of adolescent health, will provide many opportunities for faculty and trainees to become involved in research activities. During the first year of funding, the LEAH faculty have joined with faculty from the other three UAB MCHB training programs to create a UAB MCHB Collaborative Network. The collaborative network has chosen youth in transition as an area of joint interest. Plans are being made to hold a regional conference. Over the past year directors from the seven LEAH projects have held teleconferences on a monthly basis to develop a closer working relationship. They have agreed to send a LEAH representative to annual meetings of MCHB programs including LEND, PPC, and PIPAH in an attempt to develop a closer working relationship with other MCHB training programs. LEAH faculty and faulty from the other UAB-MCHB funded training projects have met with representatives from the Alabama Department of Children’s Rehabilitation Services to develop a plan to assist older adolescents and young adults with special health care needs to transition into the adult health care system. Agreements have been reached that this would be a joint endeavor led by CRS and will include the other MCHB training programs along with the State Department of Public Health. LEAH faculty will continue to seek opportunities to provide continuing education and technical assistance. Both faculty and trainees will continue to provide technical assistance at the local, state, regional and national level.

COORDINATION
1. The Southeast Regional Section of the Society for Adolescent Medicine has requested that faculty from the LEAH program assist in the development of a regional initiative to improve the health status of adolescents in the Southeastern, United States. They are interested in having a regional meeting to identify major problem areas and to develop a regional health plan. 2. LEAH faculty intend to work with representatives from Children’s Rehabilitation Services and other MCHB and Title V funded projects in the region to develop a mechanism to transition adolescents and young adults with special health care needs into the adult health care system. Discussions have already been held to try to include representatives from the Alabama Chapter of the Academy of Family Physicians and the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. 3. LEAH faculty will continue to work on national committees (e.g. American Academy of Pediatrics, American Dietetics Association, and National Commission on Correctional Health Care). As members of national committees LEAH faculty will work to prove expertise in the development of guidelines and policies affecting adolescents and young adults. 4. State Title V/MCH Networking- Each quarter all MCH funded programs within the state of Alabama hold meetings to discuss what is going on with each project and to collaborate on on-going projects. The projects in attendance includes, the Bureau of Family Health Services (Alabama’s Title V program, CRS (Alabama’s Title V CSHCN Program), the UAB-PPC, the UAB-LEND, the UAB-LEAH, Alabama’ Early Intervention System, Family voices , Alabama Medicaid Agency as well as the current Nutrition Training Grant. This meeting proves an excellent opportunity to network with other MCH grantees. A LEAH faculty member now attends these meetings. 5. The MCH Collaborative Network at UAB was developed to enhance collaboration among MCH training projects at UAB as well as to develop an infrastructure for the MCHB-funded training projects to work consistently and methodically. Members of the Collaborative Network are Leadership Training in Maternal and Child Health (MCH-Public Health), Pediatric Pulmonary Centers (PPC), Leadership Education in Adolescent Health (LEAH), Leadership Education in Neurological and Developmental Disorders (LEND), and Leadership Training in Pediatric Nutrition. The overall purpose of this network is to create a system for training education and research as well as to provide a mechanism to network in the areas of continuing education, information dissemination, advocacy, collaborative training, and collaborative research and grants. In order to facilitate this collaboration a unified calendar was developed incorporating all didactic programs and is distributed via list-serve and MCH web site to all faculty and trainings in the five-training projects. A primary focus is to combine resources to develop a continuing education plan that involves all projects. Plans are now underway to develop a regional continuing education program related to concerns regarding youth in transition.

EVALUATION
Since this program did not receive complete funding in fiscal year 2002-03 we were unable to recruit a full complement of trainees. As of yet we do not have any long-term trainees that have completed the program. At the present time two long-term nursing trainees are enrolled in the program along with one long-term medical fellow. We have just completed a short-term training program for two medical fellows from Taiwan. Future evaluation of the entire LEAH program will be handled by the Center for Advancement of Youth Health (CAYH). Process and outcome evaluations of the goals and objectives of the project will be divided into three areas: 1) trainee, 2) faculty, and 3) overall project. The evaluation process will track trainees throughout their training as well as into their careers to determine the role of LEAH training in the development of their leadership roles.

ANNOTATION
The purpose of this project is to improve the health status of adolescents, particularly in the Southeastern, United States, through training health professionals to assume leadership positions in academic, clinical, professional, administrative, and public health sectors of the health care system. By emphasizing positive youth development, training will focus on altering or preventing high-risk behaviors among adolescents. Educational and training programs will include a combination of didactic and experiential learning sessions, Evaluation will include process and outcome measures and will focus on trainees/fellows, faculty, and the overall project.

KEYWORDS
Adolescent, Leadership Training, Healthy People 2010, Interdisciplinary Training, Positive Youth Development, High-risk behaviors, Medicine, Nursing, Nutrition, Psychology, Social Work