Local Special Projects

Santa Rosa and Sonoma Gang Reduction Project

The City of Santa Rosa in collaboration with WestEd developed a custom module focused on assessing the scope and nature of gang activity for all schools in Santa Rosa, for grades 5 and up. The module asks questions on after-school activities, safety, violence prevention, and youth development. This module was created as part of the city’s push to confront gang involvement among youth and is funded by a city measure passed by voters. This module was later developed into the CHKS Gang Risk Assessment Module (GRAM).

See survey module. For information about this project, contact Leslie Poyner at lpoyner@wested.org or (510) 302.4241.

University of San Francisco and the Alameda County School Health Services Coalition

Founded in 1996, the Alameda County School Health Services Coalition is a unique collaboration of adolescent health advocates and providers who share their expertise, insights, and experience to improve the delivery of health care in schools across Alameda County. Since 1998 the Coalition has had Alameda County schools with health centers administer a custom health care module as part of their California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS). The goal of the coalition was to elicit information about student health care needs and service utilization, as well as their satisfaction with, and perceived impact of health center services.

see the survey module used in this project. For more information about the Alameda County School Health Services Coalition, please contact James Nguyen, Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, at (510) 667-4487 or James.Nguyen@acgov.org.

For more information about the Evaluation (of the Alameda County School Health Services Coalition), please contact Leah Maddock, UCSF, at (415) 502.4058 or Leah.Maddock@ucsf.edu.

For more information about this module, contact Leslie Poyner at lpoyner@wested.org or (510) 302.4241.

Marin Healthy Partnerships Community Needs Assessment

Healthy Marin Partnership was formed in response to Senate Bill 697, a legislative mandate that requires communities to complete a needs assessment every three years. Each assessment guides community planning for the three years that follow. Marin County choose a collaborative community assessment process with leaders from hospitals, the Marin County Office of Education. and Marin County Health and Human Services, along with other key stakeholders, joining forces to produce this triennial community needs assessments.

Results of the California Healthy Kids surveys are a primary source of youth-related data for this needs assessment, which focuses on four issues affecting youth and community: high-risk alcohol use; tobacco use; nutrition; and physical activity. Uniform data provided by the survey allow an in-depth look at social norms and environmental factors that result in conditions and behaviors affecting the health of young people. These data also serve to identify areas that deserve to be highlighted or need improvement.

For more information about the Marin Healthy Partnership contact Theresa Rockas at Theresa.X.Rockas@kp.org. For information about this module contact Leslie Poyner at lpoyner@wested.org or (510) 302.4241.

Santa Clara County Project

The Santa Clara County Department of Public Health has developed a custom module for secondary students. The module asks questions on access to health care, suicide, and sexual behavior. The results are compiled as part of the Santa Clara County Chartbook, produced every two years by the Santa Clara Public Health Department and WestEd.

2005-06 SCC CHKS Summary (pdf)
2004 Santa Clara Chartbook (pdf)
2003 Children and Youth Key Indicators of Wellbeing (pdf)

For more information about this module, contact Leslie Poyner at lpoyner@wested.org or (510) 302.4241.

Educational Psychology

Since 2007 WestEd's Health and Human Development Program has been collaborating with the Educational Psychology Department at California State University – East Bay, to help schools and student-counselors better understand and use the School Connectedness (RYDM) results from the CHKS. The School of Counseling and School Psychology programs, led by Dr. Rolla E. Lewis, and Dr. Greg Jennings, have incorporated coursework on the CHKS into their program and require their CSU professionals-in-training to access and use their school’s RYDM/CHKS results to inform current school faculty and/or to guide a major school improvement project.