When you hear the word “innovation,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For many, it might be splashy new technologies, certain figureheads, or industries built around the promise of disrupting the status quo. But what about innovations built to meet the real needs of young people? Innovation that centers their safety, autonomy and well-being? What if the flashiest solution isn’t always the best one?

At the In/Tend Incubator Hub, we think about innovation differently. Rather than focusing on flashy solutions, we believe innovation should be relational and user-centered, solving problems with communities rather than for them. In doing so, we question some commonly held assumptions about what innovation should look like and suggest a new approach.

Move fast and break things ➔ Rethink and rebuild

The phrase “move fast and break things” has become associated with a tendency to prioritize speed and disruption over the safety and trust of the people a solution is meant to serve. This tradeoff carries real weight when the people affected are young people navigating their health and care. Although there is value in moving forward with imperfect solutions, breaking things without intention and input from end users is reckless and counter-productive to what we aim to accomplish.

Instead, In/Tend encourages teams to use rapid prototyping, user testing, and failure to challenge their assumptions and dive even deeper into the problem. For example, one team made lo-fi mini prototypes for each of their ideas that they shared with end users to gauge their interest. This testing helped the team eliminate ideas that didn’t resonate and focus on developing a prototype their end users were genuinely interested in.

The lone creative genius ➔ Collective success

True innovation is relational, not individual: the product of shared effort, trust, and lived experience.

Stories about innovation often center on the lone creative genius with an idea that changed everything. These stories erase the contributions of teams, communities, and ecosystems that actually make change happen. True innovation is relational, not individual: the product of shared effort, trust, and lived experience.

Our teams of three bring unique perspectives and strengths, and it’s that combination that makes their work stronger. For one team, bringing together three members of different organizations allowed them greater access to different communities than they would have had on their own. These connections enabled them to receive insights from end users from the multiple communities they aimed to bring together with their innovation.

Flash over substance ➔ Substance over flash

It’s easy to get caught up in the latest technologies, buzzwords, and trends. These things feel marketable, exciting, and like a way to attract attention. When combined with the assumption that innovation has to be something new, this can result in innovation that’s flashy but lacks substance. Instead of focusing on what’s new and buzzy, we encourage teams to focus on what their users say they need and not dismiss low-tech, simple, or tried-and-true ideas.

Some of our teams’ initial ideas were technology-based, like moderated chatrooms and apps, but after talking with end users about their needs, teams decided to go with lower-tech prototypes that were more accessible to end users.

Inaccessibility ➔ User-centered change

Innovation can feel exclusive. Some consider it the domain of those “in-the-know,” who assume they can anticipate, even manufacture, desires people don’t even know they have. In/Tend pushes teams the other direction: to challenge their own assumptions about what their users want, or even who their users are.

For example, one team came into the process with the assumption that their end users, fathers, were less willing or unable to talk to their children about sexual health. By talking more with their end users and challenging their assumptions, the team learned that they did actually want to talk to their children about sexual health, but didn’t have the space, time, or means to do so. Understanding and empathizing with the people they’re designing for enables teams to build trust with communities and create solutions that truly reflect their needs.

Measuring what matters in innovation

While these are key philosophies of In/Tend, they are also something we assess. As the team evaluating In/Tend, we look at two things: 1) whether teams are creating innovations that are feasible and genuinely reflect user input, and 2) whether the Hub itself is living up to this approach in how it supports teams, challenges assumptions, and builds trust with the communities it serves. Results suggest both are holding true.

Innovation doesn’t have to mean the next best thing. It can be reflective instead of reactive, collaborative instead of competitive, and responsible instead of reckless. At In/Tend, meaningful innovation starts with understanding the experiences of the young people and communities we’re designing for, and it’s how we’re building solutions that actually meet their unique needs.

At Healthy Teen Network, we believe creating a better future for young people requires more than good intentions. It requires asking questions, listening to communities, building evidence, and continually learning what works—and how we can put that knowledge into practice. For more than three decades, Jennifer Manlove has contributed to that work through research that has helped advance our understanding of adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health.

We’re honored to present the 2026 Douglas B. Kirby Researcher of the Year Award to Jennifer Manlove, PhD, for her longstanding leadership, research, and commitment to building the evidence base that helps our field better support young people.

At Healthy Teen Network, we believe young people deserve access to information that is accurate, inclusive, relevant, and engaging. Young people are constantly learning about their bodies, relationships, sexuality, and identities—and they deserve resources that meet their questions with honesty rather than shame, stigma, or misinformation.

That belief is at the heart of the Healthy Teen Network Visionary Award, which recognizes individuals and organizations whose innovative work is helping shape a more equitable future for young people and the sexual and reproductive health field.

At #HealthyTeen26: Made to Belong, we’re honored to present the 2026 Visionary Award to Amaze for its groundbreaking work making comprehensive sex education accessible to young people everywhere.

At Healthy Teen Network, we believe every young person deserves the opportunity to build a future they envision for themselves and their families. That belief has been at the heart of our work since our founding in 1979 as the National Organization for Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting (NOAPP).

From the beginning, Healthy Teen Network has worked to affirm and support young people who are pregnant or parenting and to ensure that young families have access to the resources, services, and support they need to thrive. We do this because creating inclusive, affirming systems for young parents helps create greater equity for all young people. That commitment is also why we created the Healthy Teen Network Young Parent Achievement Award.

The Young Parent Achievement Award recognizes a young parent who has met the challenges of early parenting, achieved extraordinary personal and/or professional success, and demonstrated phenomenal leadership. But this award is about more than recognizing accomplishments. It is about celebrating young parents for who they are, what they have achieved, and the futures they are creating for themselves and their families.

We’re honored to present the 2026 Young Parent Achievement Award to Mariama Smith.

Since we were founded in 1979, Healthy Teen Network has been your trusted, go-to source for training and technical assistance.

If you’re looking for training around supplemental topics, such as how to answer youth questions, key skills that young people need from a sex ed curriculum, or how to gain confidence around condom demonstrations—reach out. We’d love to talk with you about how we can support you in the amazing work you do to show up for young people.

We offer training on four comprehensive sexual health curricula. Keep reading to see if one of them is right for you.

As a kid, I thought that becoming an adult came with the development of a special skill: the ability to purchase groceries at random and turn them into recognizable meals. It seemed my parents filled our shopping cart without any rhyme or reason and left no ingredients wasted as they crafted dishes throughout the week.

After I started shopping for myself, it became clear there was much more to it: There was a great deal of forethought and planning that went into feeding a family of five. For a while, I was wasting tons of money and food on ingredients I never really needed. It was not uncommon to have a rotating roster of food going bad in the back of the fridge, only to be remembered once one of my unfortunate college roommates discovered the biohazard. (And if you’ve just remembered the bag of mixed greens that have surely liquified by now, maybe put it out of its misery once you finish reading this.)

One change made all the difference in my grocery habits, though: Recipes! Once I began meal planning with specific recipes in mind, I was able to shop more efficiently, cook with less stress, and waste far less produce. It sounds simple, but if you’ve ever gone grocery shopping or picked a dinner restaurant when you’re already hangry, you know how difficult it can be to maintain your rationality.

As humans, our physiological and psychological states are closely linked, so an empty stomach is not unlike a heightened stress response. A state of emotional arousal can decrease our ability to think of the coping mechanisms that would bring us back to equilibrium, just like how being hungry can decrease our ability to plan the week’s meals. This can be especially true for young people, who don’t have a lifetime of experience building regulation skills.

In the same way, recipes can also be picked out ahead of time to manage stress, with grounding exercises serving as the ingredients.

Now, I choose recipes and make my grocery list before I go to the store, so once I show up, I don’t have to think twice about what I need, and when it’s time to make dinner, I don’t have to figure out what to cook. In the same way, recipes can also be picked out ahead of time to manage stress, with grounding exercises serving as the ingredients. That way, when a young person is feeling overwhelmed, emotional, or triggered, there’s already a plan in place to help them re-regulate.

Cue our new resource, Grounding Exercises: How to Create Grounding Recipes with Young People. This guide is for youth-supporting professionals and young people to practice grounding skills together. It is designed to be used with the Thrivology Grounding Exercises and helps you support young people in choosing and combining those exercises into simple grounding “recipes” for stressful and overwhelming moments. There are a few sample recipes inside to inspire your own. And, just like changing your menu based on what’s in season, you can build different recipes for specific situations.

There may still be days that I dread cooking dinner, and there will definitely be times when emotional regulation doesn’t come easy. But having pre-planned recipes can make those moments so much more manageable. Grounding recipes can be a gift you help a young person pick out for their future self, and my sister’s chicken burrata sandwich recipe will be the gift I pick out for my future self this week.

The In/Tend Innovation Showcase is a time for us to celebrate all the time and work that the Innovation Development Teams (IDTs) have put in during their time with the Hub. It provides an opportunity for each team to share their innovation journey and present early-stage prototypes.

For In/Tend’s second cohort of IDTs, we held a hybrid Innovation Showcase this past May. The event was well attended both in person and virtually, and we received a lot of positive feedback from attendees! But truth be told, it was the first time we had ever hosted the Innovation Showcase in a hybrid format. We learned a lot about what worked, what didn’t, and things we should have considered. So, in the spirit of innovation and collaboration, we wanted to share our top four tips and tricks, so you can successfully pull off an engaging, fun, and smooth-sailing hybrid event.

Tip #1. Think about what experience you want for in-person and virtual attendees.

How will you and your team make an intentional effort to engage both the in-person and virtual attendees?

This tip is more of a mindset than an actual tangible suggestion. Start by imagining what experience you want attendees to have; it’s the very first step towards a successful event and happy attendees. How will you and your team make an intentional effort to engage both the in-person and virtual attendees? What does it look like to have high engagement among both types of attendees?

It’s easier to plan for in-person engagement; you and your team will be in the room with the guests. But often, when there are both in-person and virtual attendees, the remote attendee’s experience is not prioritized, leaving these attendees feeling disconnected and ignored. Make a concrete plan with actionable strategies for how the event, and the team running it, will engage with the virtual attendees. How will you ensure any questions or responses from virtual guests are treated as equally important to those shared in the physical room?

Tip #2. Create and assign distinct roles.

It is difficult, or nearly impossible, for one person to monitor the virtual side of a hybrid event while also ensuring the in-person component is running smoothly. More so, it is hard for someone who is in person to truly see how the event looks to a virtual attendee. There are many possible roles that can be assigned to your team, depending on the topic and format of your hybrid event, but here are some of the most important roles you should assign to your team:

• The event host/facilitator(s) – This is the person (or people) who will lead the event. They begin the event, facilitate transitions between speakers or activities, and wrap up the event at the end.
• The in-person producer – This role’s tasks are very specific to handling the setup of the event platform and monitoring the quality of the event. This person also facilitates the rehearsal of the event, ensuring video, audio, screen sharing, and any other technical components run smoothly before and during the event.
• The virtual moderator – This team member will attend the event virtually and is tasked with engaging with the virtual audience. They will actively monitor the chat, engage with virtual attendees, answer any questions, and be in direct contact with the in-person producer to communicate if any technical issues come up.

Tip #3. Test and confirm your AV setup.

Audio will make or break your event. The whole point of an event with the option for virtual attendees is so they can engage remotely, but if they can’t hear, you’ve already lost their engagement. Test the audio. Test it with people at different locations around the event room. If you can, consider investing in a good microphone setup that is easy to connect.

The camera placement may involve some creative solutions. Depending on the tech setup, some rooms or cameras can automatically shift focus to the speaker; this is a great option! But if you don’t have access to this function, consider having a camera where virtual attendees will see speakers/presentations in a similar way to the in-person attendees.

Remember to think about how camera placement may change the audio setup, as oftentimes the video camera and audio may be the same device, and if you set up a camera far away from the speaker, your audio quality will suffer. Another tip: Hide the self-view camera in person (but keep it visible for virtual attendees); it can be really distracting for both the speakers and the attendees!

This may be an obvious one, but just in case—test the bandwidth of the internet at the event location. Not all internet is made equal, and you can’t assume the event venue can handle a virtual event with cameras and variable numbers of virtual attendees.

Tip #4. Set up registration with clear instructions for attending.

When setting up an event that requires registration, it’s important to have a way to track in-person sign-ups vs. virtual sign-ups. Is there a maximum capacity for the room you’re using for the event? Explore registration options that allow you to set a maximum limit for those who register to attend in person. Knowing how many people will attend in person and virtually can help you and your team make decisions on role assignments, which will help you facilitate an engaging event.

Once attendees are registered, make sure to include clear instructions on how to join (address if in person, meeting information if virtual), the start and finish times of the event shared in multiple time zones, and, if possible, a brief agenda. It is best practice to include contact information for a person on your team that attendees can contact if they have any questions about the event.

Our experience planning and hosting the Innovation Showcase taught us just how important each of these tips is when planning a hybrid event. Reflecting on that experience helped us identify these four tips and tricks as key ingredients in creating an engaging and successful event that brought our in-person and virtual attendees together and, most importantly, celebrated the hard work, dedication, and accomplishments of our second cohort of IDTs.

I’m going, going, back, back to Cali, Caliiiiiii.

That’s right, we’re on the West Coast again!

It’s your favorite foodie and adventurer back with things to do and see while here in San Diego for Healthy Teen Network’s 46^th annual national conference, Made to Belong.

Come along with me as I curate your visit to San Diego.

Come along with me as I curate your visit to San Diego.

Stop 1: Gaslamp Quarter

The historic heart and soul of downtown San Diego, the Gaslamp Quarter boasts a multitude of restaurants, cigar lounges, and entertainment options. Stroll the promenade while taking in excellent people-watching. Check out their website for a myriad of events and happenings while you’re in town!

When we set out to create In My Own Words: A Curiosity Deck for Young Parents, we drew inspiration from conversation cards like We’re Not Really Strangers, Where Should We Begin, Q Card, and more. They’re all good at getting people to ask the real questions, have honest conversations, and build relationships.

In true human-centered design spirit, we tested our Curiosity Cards idea and sought feedback from young parents and youth-supporting professionals. Not only did they tell us that this was exactly the kind of information that would have been helpful during their postpartum journey, but they unanimously loved the card format.

So, what is it about a stack of cards that makes people want to pick them up or feel comfortable opening up?

So, what is it about a stack of cards that makes people want to pick them up or feel comfortable opening up?

Is it their size—small enough to hold in your hands or carry around?

The fun of shuffling through and finding what speaks to you?

Or maybe just the novelty of it?

What the research says

As we looked into it, here’s what we found:

• Conversation cards give people social permission to explore personal topics without feeling awkward or intrusive.
• Cards let you outsource the awkwardness. As one writer puts it: “It isn’t me who is making the questions; it is the cards. That deep, slightly odd question? Not me, the cards :)…but I’d really love to hear your answer.”
• Cards turn a hard conversation into something that feels closer to a game. They reduce the pressure to start, making it easier to open up naturally. They also make it easier for you to keep going and “create conversational momentum. …We think less and answer more.”
• Cards create “a sense of turn-taking and reciprocity.” Being able to pass them from person to person creates this structure for sharing → listening → asking → answering.
• Cards also give you permission to skip uncomfortable questions. That’s a way to practice (and enforce) our own boundaries without having to have the actual ‘talk.’

In short, conversation cards can make it easier to have deeper, more meaningful conversations, especially around sensitive topics like sexual and reproductive health.

Putting it into practice

We took all these learnings and applied them to the Curiosity Cards. After talking to many young parents and professionals, we realized we wanted the cards to work both ways: useful on their own for young parents, but also a great resource for the professionals who support them (including but not limited to OB-GYNs, midwives, doulas, nurses, lactation consultants, pelvic floor therapists, and social workers).

The cards work in (at least) three different ways:

1. Young parents can read the information on the back of the cards on their own and have the option to continue the conversation with professionals they trust.
2. Professionals can introduce the cards to young parents (or any of their clients, for that matter).
3. Professionals can introduce the cards to other professionals, spreading awareness of young parents’ needs and widening their support network.