Physical wellness and nutrition are important at every age, including teenage years where youth learn physical health habits that they often carry into adulthood. The websites below offer tips to health educators and processionals for designing effective health and wellness programs, in addition to websites designed for teens to take personal initiative in improving and maintaining wellness and good nutrition.
Much thanks to the National Library of Medicine for funding this resource list.
- Staying Healthy with HIV: Nutrition/Food Safety
AIDSinfo, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
The National Library of Medicine’s AIDSinfo provides in-depth clinical resources related to HIV and AIDS, including interactive tutorials, clinical resources, and HIV/AIDS clinical trials. For providers seeing patients with HIV and AIDS, AIDSinfo has a nutrition and food safety page that shares resources on how to stay healthy with HIV. This site also provides HIV facts, statistics, and health care resources specifically for the general public, teenagers, health professionals, and researchers. - TeensHealth
TeensHealth website is designed for teenagers and also offers resources for parents. It offers quizzes, a questions and answers section for teens’ most commonly asked health questions, and interactive health activities. Providers, health professionals, educators, and parents can refer youth to the website for accurate health information, especially regarding physical health and healthy eating. - Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The YRBSS reports national surveillance data for youth behaviors in six areas, including unhealthy dietary behaviors and inadequate physical activity. Fact sheets and interactive data tables that can be customized by year and subpopulation make this resource particularly useful for grant proposal writing, presentations, and acquiring general information about a variety of trends in youth health behaviors. - Today is for Tomorrow
Today is for Tomorrow is a website designed by YTH that provides information, tips, videos, and humorous links regarding a variety of health topics, including physical health and wellness. Teens have the option of signing up for weekly health tips delivered to their mobile phone and engaging in a Tumblr site that is also part of the Today is for Tomorrow initiative. - Nutrition, Physical Activity & Obesity topic
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The CDC’s website offers guidelines, strategies, statistics, fact sheets, and more regarding adolescent nutrition and physical activity behaviors. The site also features program success stories where programs that have been implemented and were successful are summarized and highlighted. These success stories are available for download. - Bright Futures for Women’s Health and Wellness
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Bright Futures for Women’s Health and Wellness provides toolkits specific to the physical health and nutrition needs of adolescent women. Resources include handouts and tools for young women, including wallet cards designed to provide quick reminders of health eating and exercise habits.