The Adolescent Interest Group

Founded in 1999, the PAMF Adolescent Interest Group (AIG) is a collection of physicians and staff members from the Foundation's health education, psychiatry, research, family medicine, pediatrics and administration departments. The group is chaired by Nancy Brown, Ph.D and works to improve the care we provide our adolescent patients.

Given shrinking school and health budgets, the Adolescent Interest Group at the Palo Alto Medical Foundationhas developed several community benefit projects targeting specific health needs of adolescents, their parents and teachers. The Adolescent Interest Group works with local families and schools to develop information and activities that are easily integrated into family communication or classes (e.g., laptop ergonomics, healthy relationships, trauma recovery, bullying), as well as providing speakers for parent education and classroom events.

In 2001, we launched a teen website, “We’re Talking Teen Health,” which provides medically accurate, accessible information to more than 4.5 million visitors a year. “We’re Talking, Too: Preteen Health” was launched in 2004 and is tailored to children ages 9 to 12 years old and their parents, attracting 500,000 visitors a year. With a grant from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health we redesigned the parents site in 2007 to link parents to the information on the teen and preteen sites (http://www.pamf.org/parents).

In 2010 we began adding interactive tools like E-Chug, the on-line alcohol intervention and social norming program developed by San Diego State University and two versions of the WAY2GO! electronic wellness assessment for teens and young adults that are free for individuals, clinics, and schools to use in health promotion programs.