CASEY Health: Coordinating Activities to Support Empowerment of Youth

Our initiative seeks to improve healthy behavior in Casey County, a rural Appalachia community in Kentucky. Current primordial prevention efforts across Kentucky are fragmented, often begin too late, and lack standardization. We are implementing a multifaceted strategy to identify and address the unique health promotion and prevention needs of Kentucky youth and their families. Our goal is to develop a novel health curriculum based on what we learn in Casey County, which targets students in third to fifth grade and incorporates peer-engagement with local high school and college-bound students.