Building Resilience for Healthy Kids

Mental Health Wellness 1

School based, mental-health intervention focused on improving self-efficacy and coping skills in children aged 9-13 years. The overall premise of our intervention is that by teaching children these skills they will in-turn become more resilient when faced with life-stressors and/or adverse events.

Healthy Kids is a 1:1 health coaching intervention delivered in school-settings. Students meet weekly with their assigned health coach and together they identify both strengths and areas for improvement with respect to resilience, developing resilience skills, and setting resilience goals. Topics discussed include coping skills, self-efficacy, and interpersonal relationships. The program was developed using the social determination theory (SDT), goal theory, and elements from the social-ecological model. SDT was used within the intervention to promote and facilitate behavior change. Goal theory was also utilized to develop strategies to support youth short- and long-term goal setting. Finally, weekly discussions about resilience and goal setting activities accounted for elements of the social-ecological model which acknowledges that behaviors are not independent factors, but are influenced by multiple levels of one's personal and social environment.

United States