Brittany McBride, MPH
NOVEMBER 5, 2026
The Healthy Teen Network Visionary Award honors forward-thinking, insightful, and proactive individuals or organizations committed to innovative approaches in adolescent sexual and reproductive health education and care.
Visionaries dream of the endless possibilities in education, health care, technology, and policy, ensuring that what young people learn, experience, and discover about sexuality is relevant, timely, and inspiring.
Anticipating the needs of the ever-changing lives of young people and creating holistic solutions with young people that cultivate equity, reduce health disparities, and are inclusive and affirming are at the core of the Healthy Teen Network Visionary Award.
Last month, at the Healthy Teen Network annual conference in San Diego, we presented AMAZE with the 2026 Visionary Awardee. Accepting on behalf of AMAZE, Brittany McBride, MPH, shared the story of AMAZE’s journey:
Wow, thank you so much for that wonderful intro! I’m Brittany McBride, Director of Sexuality Education and Training at Advocates for Youth, and I’m so honored to be here tonight. Advocates has worked in partnership with Healthy Teen Network for decades, and we’re always so happy to do so. Because we share the core belief that young people have the right to thrive. We’re so proud to have this work honored with the Visionary Award.
AMAZE started as a consortium of Advocates for Youth, Answer, and Youth Tech Health, and today it is a project of Advocates for Youth, generously funded by the Westwind Foundation. It’s a collection of fun, animated videos that answer young people’s questions about their bodies. But it’s so much more.
Over a decade ago, the founders of AMAZE could already see the many threats facing sex education. Even then, sex ed was underfunded, censored, and poorly defined. Too often, where a young person lived determined the quality of the sex education they received. Young people’s health suffered from this underinvestment in sexual health and well-being. A crisis in youth mental health had already begun, but few resources addressed this topic at all. Black and brown young people, LGBTQIA+ young people, disabled young people, lower-income youth, and many other marginalized students were not getting the information they needed to protect their health, plan their futures, and love themselves and their bodies.
With these powerful tools, AMAZE could reach young people wherever they lived. And we could do it in a way they could relate to.
But the team also saw opportunity in the form of video and social media. With these powerful tools, AMAZE could reach young people wherever they lived. And we could do it in a way they could relate to. With honest, frank discussions of challenging topics. With information that is medically accurate, evidence-informed, and inclusive of everyone. With catchy songs, funny jokes, and just downright silliness. We burst on the scene with the smash hit “How the Boner Grows,” and we’ve never looked back.
That’s how AMAZE got started. So, how’s it going? Well, thanks to so many of you who integrated AMAZE into your programs, passed it along to colleagues, and shared valuable student feedback with us, AMAZE is now a global brand with more than 320 original videos. Over 2,000 international adaptations. Over 70 languages and dialects. Hundreds of millions of views around the globe. Over the past 10 years, AMAZE has expanded to include “AMAZE Jr.” videos for ages 4–9, and many videos for older teenagers. All with the same goal of providing fun, animated answers to the real questions young people have about puberty, sex, their bodies, and healthy relationships. Our mission is to foster a global community where young people are fully supported, affirmed, and engage in open, honest conversations with the adults in their lives.
AMAZE works with sex educators, animators, digital content specialists, and young people to make sure the content is honest, accurate, and relevant. It’s especially meaningful to me and the AMAZE team that this award is coming in a year when the theme is focused on belonging. AMAZE has always produced videos from a place of intersectionality and inclusion. Our videos regularly feature LGBTQ characters, always have diverse casts, and never shy away from giving a direct answer—no euphemisms, no lies about the effectiveness of any contraceptive method. AMAZE has videos on abortion, porn, gender identity, pronouns, chest binders, health disparities, faith and culture, masturbation (for all genders!), and pleasure…just to name a few. If young people are searching for it, AMAZE tries to have a video for it.
While AMAZE is most famous for our YouTube channels, our videos are also downloaded and played in classrooms across the globe — from Chicago, Paris, Cape Town, and Tokyo to the most rural villages in India, Ecuador, Syria, and Cameroon. AMAZE videos are played on TV in South Africa, Togo, and Mexico; on the metro in Ukraine; and on Eastern Europe’s biggest streaming platform, MeGogo. AMAZE videos are also shown in the waiting rooms of healthcare facilities around the globe, and doctors in the U.S. can “write prescriptions” for young people to watch AMAZE videos. They also produce toolkits and lesson plans to help teachers, parents, and homeschools use AMAZE videos to assist in lessons.
We offer a virtual educator conference each year to share resources and sex education techniques with hundreds of teachers. We’ve heard from countless educators that they love using AMAZE videos in their classrooms, that the videos help remove the shame and stigma from sensitive topics, and that students love them. We also anticipate the changing needs of youth and youth-serving professionals through releasing videos about AI and by producing card games, comic books, and steadily increasing the availability of non-digital resources.
And AMAZE videos and resources are one hundred percent free. That’s how we’re changing sex education across the world. The journey hasn’t been without controversy. We’ve been one of the online right wing’s favorite targets for quite some time now for daring to treat young people like…people. Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and Libs of TikTok love to come for us. Our mentions are regularly in shambles. But you know what they say about that: It must mean we’re doing something right! We know that we are reaching young people who need AMAZE the most—and that’s what keeps us going.
We owe young people honesty. We owe them education. We owe them inclusion, authenticity, and integrity. And a little fun doesn’t hurt.
The fact is we’re in incredibly challenging times for youth and adults alike. We are surrounded by misinformation and disinformation. And it’s less and less clear what sources young people can trust. Trust to have correct facts, and also trust not to patronize, insult, or stigmatize them. That is why this work is so important to AMAZE. We owe young people honesty. We owe them education. We owe them inclusion, authenticity, and integrity. And a little fun doesn’t hurt.
So, no matter the threats we face, no matter the censorship some people demand, we’re not going to give in or give up! We’re going to keep being honest. We’re going to keep being inclusive. We’re going to keep being authentic, and yes, we’re going to keep being fun! That’s how we will keep being visionary and keep working to earn this prestigious award. Thank you so much for everything.
Photo By: Gina Desiderio
