I am excited and honored to join Health Connected as the new Executive Director. I want to thank Abi Karlin-Resnick for her support and assistance as she has helped me transition into this position. Abi and her staff have grown the organization to be a true leader in the sexual health education space. I am grateful for Abi’s continued dedication to this organization and those we serve as well as for her role as a mentor to me. I first came across Health Connected as a 5th grade educator, looking for a curriculum for my students in 2014. Immediately, I saw the benefit of equipping students with ..read more

Since you’re an important part of the Health Connected community, I am reaching out to share some exciting news with you. I’m pleased to announce that Alexandria (Alex) LeeNatali will be our next Executive Director. Alex’s appointment is the culmination of a very thorough search process, and our Board of Directors is confident that she is the right person to lead Health Connected into its next chapter. At every step of the search process, Alex impressed us with her experience, her strategic thinking, her ability to see the big picture, and her tenacity. Alex is first and foremost an educator ..read more

Dear Friends, It is with a full heart that I am reaching out to you to announce I will be stepping down as Executive Director of Health Connected this summer. It has been a pleasure and honor to serve as Health Connected’s Executive Director and work alongside a fantastic team for the last nine years. There have been many exciting moments, occasional challenges, and many opportunities for learning and growth. At every step along the way, I have been surrounded by an exceptional team of staff members who are deeply committed to our work and the communities with which we partner. I am proud of w ..read more

I am pleased to announce that Health Connected’s board recently approved a new strategic plan, charting our course into 2024. We conducted a year-long process that incorporated feedback from key stakeholders and deeply engaged our staff and board of directors. Through this process, we clarified our vision of the world we wish to co-create, the central problem we are working to solve and our approach to solving that problem, our core values for how we hope to do this important work, and our primary areas of focus for the next 2+ years. We have experienced considerable organizational growth ove ..read more

Updated and re-posted, October 2021 One of the most common questions we get from parents is, “How can I get more information about the lessons my child will receive at school?” Parents want transparency in sex education. “Transparency” means different things to different people. For many of the families we serve, the desire for transparency is driven by their desire to understand what’s being presented in their student’s sex education course, so they can better support their kids at home. And certainly some parents may have concerns about whether some content aligns with their values or about ..read more

For the last year, I have had the opportunity to lead the development of Health Connected’s newest curriculum, Teen Talk for Youth in Alternative Settings (YAS)—a comprehensive sexual health education curriculum designed specifically for youth who tend to be marginalized by the systems they must engage with, including youth in foster care, youth in juvenile justice facilities, and youth in credit recovery programs. This curriculum has been in the works for quite some time. With a renewed and focused effort prompted by our collaboration with the CA Reproductive Health Equity Project and throug ..read more

Knowing that entertainment plays a big part in how we behave and view life, we must acknowledge how that impact is magnified when it comes to teenagers and their views of relationships. Being a teenager myself, I know it’s incredibly hard to understand the full complexities of what it means to be in a relationship, especially since we’re just beginning to form expectations for romance and get a grip on our emotions and hormones. It’s kind of like stumbling in the dark, searching for stability. When we have entertainment repeatedly showing us a particular image of what romance and relationship ..read more

Everyone has boundaries. Boundaries are a significant part of building relationships and friendships, and they show respect to acquaintances and strangers. For me, acknowledging boundaries is a way of getting to know someone and starting a healthy relationship. Setting boundaries and being supportive of your friends’ boundaries is an important part of a friendship. By acknowledging a friend’s boundaries, you can demonstrate that you are a trustworthy person they can depend on. You can also create trust by doing simple things like asking about their day or about their mental health. You can li ..read more

When it comes to relationships, the teenage years can be critical for learning lessons and developing healthy habits. This is hard on its own, but this year gave us the extra obstacle of living through a global pandemic. The pandemic flipped everything upside down. It's also changed the way people, especially teens, approach relationships. I wanted to truly find out how bad these dystopian-esque circumstances impacted teenage relationships. So I put an anonymous Google Form on my Instagram to find out firsthand how the pandemic affected relationships and mental health. I ended up with twelve ..read more

Sex work is displayed in various ways throughout society, exposing modern generations, especially Generation Z, to a surplus of misconceptions. Many don’t know the difference between sex trafficking and sex work. Sex trafficking uses coercion, leverage, and power dynamics to sell others for sex services without providing any compensation, whereas sex work includes consent (1). More often than not, media sources display sex work inaccurately. My peers and I have seen examples of this through social media, music videos, and influencers. For instance, introducing improper terms like “hoe” and “ho ..read more