Incorporating Health Care Transition Services into Preventive Care for Adolescents and Young Adults: A Toolkit for Clinicians
Preventive care visits represent an important opportunity to discuss health care transition with adolescents, parents, and young adults. Yet, national survey data reveal that, 85% of youth have not received guidance about health care transition from their health care providers. To address this unmet need, The National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health/Got Transition with the University of California, San Francisco’s Adolescent and Young Adult Health National Resource Center created a new free online toolkit titled Incorporating Health Care Transition Services into Preventive Care for Adolescents and Young Adults. The toolkit is available in both English and Spanish. Advising Got Transition and the Adolescent and Young Adult Health National Resource Center was a national advisory group of pediatric, adolescent medicine, reproductive health, and internal medicine experts, public health officials, and young adult advocates.
This toolkit provides suggested content for providers to introduce health care transition during preventive visits with early adolescents (ages 11-14), middle adolescents (ages 15-17), late adolescents (ages 18-21), and young adults (ages 22-25), consistent with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Bright Futures’ age groupings and format. The toolkit includes transition questions and anticipatory guidance for each age group including a motivational interviewing approach to engage youth with and without special health care needs. This toolkit aligns with the clinical report on transition jointly published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American College of Physicians. According to Dr. Patience White, Co-Director of Got Transition, “This is an exciting addition to Bright Futures, offering practical guidance for busy clinicians working to improve the ability of adolescent and young adults to manage their own health and effectively use health services.”
For more information about health care transition and this toolkit, please visit Got Transition at www.GotTransition.org or contact Annie Schmidt at ASchmidt@TheNationalAlliance.org.