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.

This spring, a team of middle school researchers from Wake and Durham County public schools did something studies about young people don’t do often enough. Young people collected the data themselves, coded it themselves, and then told the adults what it meant.

They surveyed 477 of their peers on a Belonging and Wellness Student Poll that they designed. Working in pairs late into the night, they read open-ended responses and negotiated the right label for each one until they agreed—the same inductive coding a doctoral student would be trained in during their PhD journey. Then they partnered with doctoral students in a university research methods course to run statistics on their data set, and they carried the findings to the national stage at the American Educational Research Association.

Here is the most important thing our team seeks to emphasize: Young people are the experts of their own belonging experience.

Here is the most important thing our team seeks to emphasize: Young people are the experts of their own belonging experience. Nobody has better insight into whether they belong in your space than they do. Give them the tools, and they will show you exactly what they see.

They are reading the room—the people, the setting, and the system. Those three domains have names. In our Opportunities to Belong framework (Gray, Hope, & Matthews, 2018), belonging is conceptualized across three structures: interpersonal, instructional, and institutional.

Interpersonal: Are there people here I connect to?

We asked about the things adults do to seem cool that just make it worse, and 44% named using slang. In interviews, the students were generous about it. They described the discomfort of watching an adult they liked reach for a shortcut around the connection they had already started to build. They can feel the difference between an adult connecting and an adult performing a connection. The move that works is the opposite of trying harder. Walk in your own confidence, and when you genuinely want to understand their world, let them teach you. A young person explaining their culture to an adult who is truly listening is belonging in motion.

Instructional: Is this a setting I want to belong in?

A young person makes inferences about their own belonging by watching what happens to people who get things wrong—including the adults. Students are precise observers of the distance between what adults say and what they do. One of the clearest examples in the data was the phone rule. One in four students expressed that adults who impose phone rules on them also spend significant time scrolling and laughing while looking at their own devices.

They also want adults to own their Ls when they make a mistake. When you say, “I got that wrong,” or say “Teach me, I don’t actually know that one,” you make it safe for a young person to be wrong, too—to ask the awkward question, to give the honest answer.

Institutional: Do people here value people like me?

The dress code theme emerged throughout the youth-led poll, even though no question was ever asked about it. When students were asked what makes them roll their eyes, many answered, “Take your hood off.” If there is one thing the middle schoolers we work with love, it’s a nice, comfortable hoodie. Think about it: They are rapidly developing and going through puberty, experiencing bad hair days, or simply expressing themselves through fashion. Hoodies cover all bases. As one seventh grader explained, “Not being able to have your hood on makes zero sense—you can still see the person.” That is a thirteen-year-old auditing a rule and reporting that no one ever gave a reason for it. When the reason is missing, young people fill the blank, sometimes with the least generous explanation available.

Ask the experts you already have

The young people you serve are likely asking themselves: Are these people real? Is this setting safe? Is this system fair?

The young people you serve are likely asking themselves: Are these people real? Is this setting safe? Is this system fair? You can gather those data the way the students did. Ask your own version of the question with the young people you serve—”Name something here that doesn’t make sense to you”—anonymously. Then report back, and name one thing that will change because of what you heard. The asking is easy. The reporting back and making adjustments is where it gets tough.

In closing, you do not have to guess how belonging is going in your space. You have experts on site. The middle schoolers who ran the study we supported coded the responses, ran the statistics, and presented to a room of professors—and they demonstrated that when young people take the methodological reins, they surface what many of us miss.

Want to learn more about what it takes to foster belonging? Hear DeLeon speak at #HealthyTeen26 in San Diego, October 5–7!

For many of us, busy has become our default setting. We’re parents, caregivers, teachers, coaches, neighbors, employees, and more, wearing our packed schedules as proof that we are doing our best. Rest, on the other hand, feels like something we have to earn. Something that can wait until the to-do list is done (which, let’s be honest, it never is).

But here’s the thing: Rest is not a reward. It’s a requirement. Not something we only get when we show that we’ve done enough to deserve it, but something we instead put at the top of that to-do list. And sure, getting enough hours of sleep at night is important. But this kind of rest goes beyond a good night’s sleep.

This kind of rest is something we often find a little harder to make time for: actually putting down the to-do list, not mentally running through tomorrow’s schedule, and not squeezing in one more errand, email, or task before we clock out for the day. Genuinely giving our minds and bodies a chance to exhale and exist without an agenda, even for a little while, is the kind of rest we are missing.

Contrary to what the world may tell us, rest isn’t laziness. It’s recovery, and it’s what makes everything else sustainable.

When we don’t build in real, unstructured, unplugged downtime, the effects can quickly escalate, taking a toll on our physical health in ways that are easy to overlook until they’re hard to ignore. Contrary to what the world may tell us, rest isn’t laziness. It’s recovery, and it’s what makes everything else sustainable. And the way we as adults relate to rest quietly shapes how the young people in our lives will relate to it into adulthood.

Young People Need Rest, and They’re Taking Notes

The young people in our lives are often more stretched than we are. Between school, extracurriculars, social lives, and part-time jobs, many young people often move through their days with almost no real downtime.

Adding to this is the fact that they are at a pivotal point in their lives where they are still developing their sense of self, learning to regulate their emotions, and figuring out how to navigate relationships. For them, the ability to pause, breathe, and reset is more of a developmental need than a luxury.

Here’s the other piece we’re all familiar with: Young people absorb our behavior far more than they absorb our advice (Does the phrase, “Do as I say and not as I do,” ring a bell?). You can tell a teenager to take a break while visibly never taking one yourself. The words don’t exactly stick when they contradict what young people see modeled in front of them.

This isn’t meant to be a guilt trip, but an invitation. Because it means that one of the most powerful things a trusted adult can do for a young person’s well-being doesn’t require the programs or difficult conversations we’re used to sharing. It just requires letting them see us rest.

When we say, “I need a break,” and actually take one, whether it’s stepping away from the laptop without explaining ourselves or sitting on the porch and doing nothing for twenty minutes, we are sending a clear message. We’re letting the young people around us know that their bodies are allowed to have limits, and it’s ok to stop when they’ve been reached.

So How Do We Do It?

Prioritizing rest is easier said than done. But the good news is you don’t have to overhaul your life to start incorporating small moments of rest, and going through this process is part of the modeling that young people should see.

Start by shifting your perspective to see rest as something you need, not something you earn.

Start by shifting your perspective to see rest as something you need, not something you earn. Then, try saying, “I’m going to take a break,” out loud and actually take it, or schedule time in your calendar to do nothing. Consistency is key, and over time, these small moments will turn into non-negotiables in your day.

When we invest in our own rest and well-being and let others see us do it, we’re not just doing something good for ourselves. We’re contributing to a shifting culture where the young people watching us grow up understanding that they don’t need to earn the right to care for themselves.

Oh, Miro. The digital workspace with lots of colorful sticky notes.

We’ve all seen examples of the young person who is eager to show up for one class but consistently ends up in the nurse’s office during another. Then there is the teen with a 4.0 who quietly stops going to school, risking graduation due to low attendance. And we all know kids who thrive in their activities outside of school but seem to do the bare minimum during the regular school day. Why is this?

There are many explanations. But one comes up again and again with the teens I support—and the research backs it up: social connection. Here is how I often hear it expressed:

“I don’t have any friends in that class.” “That teacher doesn’t like me.” “I feel put on the spot when I get called on.” “I can’t focus.”

The science is clear: We need human connection to survive.

The science is clear: We need human connection to survive. Across social species, it is one of the strongest predictors of how long and how well we live. For adolescents, the drive for belonging is especially intense. When a teen feels like they don’t belong—at school, at home, among their peers—the same part of the brain that registers physical pain lights up.

It hurts that much.

Feeling excluded sets off a neurobiological threat response. Your heart rate climbs, blood rushes to your large muscles, your body readies itself to fight or flee. When fighting or fleeing are not possible (e.g., you can’t leave the place that feels scary), your nervous system shifts into freeze. Cortisol keeps your inner engine racing at full throttle, so you are hyper-aroused on the inside and completely paralyzed on the outside.

Under threat, the brain protects you by shutting down the very machinery you need for social engagement and learning. Clear thinking, working memory, impulse control—the work of the prefrontal cortex—go offline. From the outside, it can look like a teen who refuses to go to school. Who knows the answers but is unable to perform on the test. Who has chronic headaches, or a stomach that’s always upset. Who is quick to anger. Who reaches for alcohol or drugs to soothe the pain.

Each of these is a sign of a nervous system under distress.

I think of a young person in my practice who told me, down to the period, which class she had one friend in—and which ones she didn’t. The classes with a friend, she walked into. The ones without, she found a reason to be somewhere else. Same kid. Same brain. Different conditions.

Here’s the hopeful part. Connection doesn’t just feel good. It buffers stress at the level of the body. When we are near people we trust, the brain literally outsources the work of managing threat.

Experiments using fMRI imaging have shown that when a person faces a threat (like an electric shock) completely alone, the prefrontal cortex burns enormous amounts of energy to manage the fear. Give that same person a trusted hand to hold, and the prefrontal cortex goes quiet. The brain saves the energy because it no longer has to face the danger by itself.

This reaction explains why we feel less fearful and more capable when we are with people we trust.

When a teen feels safe and connected, their brain can stop scanning for danger. All that freed-up energy can be redirected into social and academic engagement, memory consolidation, and deep learning. Teens who feel secure in their relationships are more likely to show up, take risks, be curious, contribute, and dream.

Belonging is a biological experience that is foundational to healthy development.

Belonging is a biological experience that is foundational to healthy development.

But belonging doesn’t just happen. We have to design for it—and then monitor it with the same attention and rigor as we do other important measures. It may in fact be the most important thing to measure since it is predictive of so many other outcomes—including longevity.

There are many research-based strategies to increase belonging that have had positive results, but no one strategy works for every teen in every place. This is why it is critical that we partner with young people in our communities and listen deeply to understand what they are experiencing, what they need, and what they hope for. It is especially important to invite young people who are part of marginalized groups into the co-design process; they are more likely to experience ‘belonging uncertainty,’ and it is critical that any effort to increase social connection and belonging centers their experiences, needs, and ideas.

The teen in the nurse’s office, the 4.0 student who stops showing up—there is nothing ‘wrong’ with them. They are telling us that something about the conditions we have created is not working for them.

Want to learn more about the neuroscience of connection? Hear Kathleen speak at the opening session of #HealthyTeen26 in San Diego, October 5–7!

Summer often brings a shift in pace. School is out, routines and schedules change, and communities come alive in different ways. Warm weather fills neighborhood parks with families and friends, concert venues and fields buzz with excitement, and sports fans gather to cheer on their favorite teams. Whether it’s attending a local festival, watching a match with friends, or spending more time outdoors, summer can create opportunities for connection, growth, and joy.

As I think about Healthy Teen Network’s upcoming conference, Made to Belong, and its focus on connection, community, and coming together, I find myself reflecting on the ways summer helped shape my own sense of belonging and connection.

The Summers That Shape Us

This reflection brings me back to how I spent my summers as a teen. Those memories carry a sense of nostalgia that I often find myself recreating in my summer plans today. I think of weekends spent at Florida’s many beaches, cookouts and fireworks with family, volunteering at our local community center, creating playlists with my siblings and cousins filled with our favorite summer jams, and exploring new interests like photography and piano. Looking back, those experiences offered more than entertainment or a way to pass the time. They helped me build relationships, discover new skills, and develop a stronger sense of self and community. I always found myself entering the new school year feeling recharged, inspired, and connected to myself in new ways.

The moments that helped me feel connected, supported, and inspired as a young person continue to shape how I build community, pursue new interests, and find joy in adulthood.

While these moments may seem simple, they can play an important role in supporting young people’s well-being. Summer can be a season of discovery and often creates space for experiences that are harder to find during the school year. This free time can provide opportunities to try something new, spend time with people who support and encourage them, and engage with their communities in meaningful ways. These experiences can help shape how young people see themselves and their place in the world. Perhaps that’s why I find myself recreating so many of those experiences today. The moments that helped me feel connected, supported, and inspired as a young person continue to shape how I build community, pursue new interests, and find joy in adulthood.

Creating Spaces for Connection, Growth, and Joy

This summer, many people are finding connection through shared experiences, whether gathering with friends to watch the World Cup, attending a local concert, participating in community celebrations, or simply spending time with loved ones outdoors. These moments remind us that belonging often grows through shared experiences.

When young people see themselves as part of a team or fan group, a volunteer group, or a community gathering, they can begin to build meaningful connections that support their growth and well-being. These experiences help foster a sense of connection not only to others, but also to themselves and the communities they call home.

Youth-supporting professionals can foster these opportunities by creating welcoming spaces, building meaningful relationships, and recognizing that growth often happens beyond formal programming. Whether through community events, volunteer opportunities, creative activities, or simply environments where young people feel seen and valued, these efforts can make a lasting difference.

Sometimes the most meaningful experiences are not the ones we carefully plan, but the moments that help young people feel connected to themselves, their communities, and one another. As youth-supporting professionals, we have an opportunity to create and champion spaces where young people can explore their interests, build relationships, and experience the joy that comes from belonging.

How are we creating opportunities for young people to experience connection? To discover new interests? To build relationships? To find joy?

As we move through the summer months, we can challenge ourselves to think beyond activities and schedules. How are we creating opportunities for young people to experience connection? To discover new interests? To build relationships? To find joy?

These moments may seem small, but they can leave a lasting impact long after summer ends. After all, belonging isn’t built in a single moment. It’s cultivated through the relationships, experiences, and communities that remind young people they matter. Their joy matters. As schools pause and communities gather in new ways throughout the summer, we have an opportunity to create the kinds of experiences that foster connection, create joy, and help young people feel that they truly belong.

When you attend #HealthyTeen26, you’re joining a community of educators, advocates, youth-supporting professionals, and changemakers committed to helping young people thrive. But what if you could deepen your learning, strengthen your skills, and start building meaningful connections before the conference officially begins?

That’s exactly what our Learning Add-Ons are designed to do.

Taking place before the conference’s first general session kicks off, Learning Add-Ons are full or half-day training sessions. They offer an opportunity to dive deeper into specialized topics through immersive, interactive training experiences.

This year’s Learning Add-On lineup offers opportunities to deepen your expertise, strengthen your practice, and explore innovative approaches to supporting young people.

Por favor, let’s be real.

These times have millions of people on edge. As a result, it has fomented a chronic state of threat for teenagers during the most pivotal years of development and their caregivers, who juggle multiple stressors amid their kids’ adolescence phase. These issues have been especially difficult for the Spanish-speaking Latine immigrant communities in urban cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

We have a deep connection and motivation for our work, and we recognize the importance of advancing this work, especially in the context of the U.S. sociopolitical turmoil that has made our professional and personal lives stressful.

Historically, researchers and program designers working with communities have not shared identities and experiences with their research participants. On our end, we are part of the Spanish-speaking Latine community, as our own families, friends, and neighbors are among the end-users of our innovation. We all do direct service work from mental health psychiatric services to sexual health education in schools, clinics, and community spaces. We have a deep connection and motivation for our work, and we recognize the importance of advancing this work, especially in the context of the U.S. sociopolitical turmoil that has made our professional and personal lives stressful.

So, where do we stand as three Latines who are part of In/Tend, the incubator hub by Healthy Teen Network, as we try to do work with our own Latine Spanish-speaking caregiver community?

The unexpected challenges that were dealt with pushed us to brainstorm and pivot to new strategies as we made our way through the In/Tend innovation pipeline. Through our learned experience, we would like to pass along the following three pieces of advice for the next In/Tend Incubator Hub teams.

1. Safety should always take priority.
2. Allocate money in the budget for unexpected costs.
3. Pause and engage in rest.

Last Friday, June 26, 2026, in an unprecedented move, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) abruptly canceled 53 out of 67 current awards under the federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP). The Department instructed awardees to cease project operations immediately.

HHS is attempting to justify the terminations by claiming that the projects no longer align with agency priorities. It is important to affirm that the terminated projects do indeed meet the TPPP’s requirements and the program expectations set forth in HHS’s notices of funding opportunity.

Why It Matters

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP), established in 2010, awards federal funds to community-based, public, and higher education organizations to use programs proven effective through rigorous evaluation to provide adolescents with the knowledge and tools needed to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes. The TPPP also funds the evaluation of promising new approaches to continually expand the menu of programs communities can use to deliver evidence-based sexual health education to young people.

1. These Terminations Harm Young People.

These programs provide the medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education young people need to make healthy choices about their bodies and futures.

The terminated TPP programs have been proven to work—rigorous evaluation has demonstrated that they change behaviors and improve health outcomes. These programs provide the medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education young people need to make healthy choices about their bodies and futures. The terminations actively harm young people by depriving them of essential education.

2. These Terminations Are Unlawful.

Congress mandated TPPP funding for “medically accurate and age appropriate” programs and specified that at least 75% of the funding must replicate proven-effective programs. These terminations are unlawful.

3. Abrupt Terminations Waste Taxpayer Dollars.

Terminating successful, evidence-based programs midway through the program or study wastes taxpayer dollars, disrupts service continuity, produces inconclusive research, eliminates jobs, and denies young people access to programs that work.

(Get more information on more talking points and how to share why all young people deserve sex education in this previous post.)

Take Action Now

Please act now to ensure our nation’s young people have access to the sexual health education programs proven to improve health outcomes.

Are You or Your Community Affected by the Terminations?

• Yes, I am directly affected.
• No, neither my community nor I am directly affected.